Addressing on nodes v processes

[Ben Lackey]

Hi,

Say I have a machine running a 32 bit Erlang node and want to address 
16GB of memory across some number of erlang processes/nodes.  Is it the 
case that:
(i) each process get its own 32 bit addressing space eg I could have a 
single node with 16GB of memory distributed across 4 process or
(ii) the node running the processes gets a single 32 bit addressing 
space that is then used in part by each process eg I would need to start 
4 nodes each with a process that used 4GB of memory.

Is mnesia treated any differently in all this, or would it just be 
another process within a node that is using some more memory?

Are there any memory limitations across nodes eg some scenario in which 
a 32 bit erlang environment could only address 4GB even over a large 
number of nodes?

Thanks,
Ben