What is the difference between far pointers and near pointers?

Solution 1:

On a 16-bit x86 segmented memory architecture, four registers are used to refer to the respective segments:

• DS → data segment
• CS → code segment
• SS → stack segment
• ES → extra segment

A logical address on this architecture is written segment:offset. Now to answer the question:

• Near pointers refer (as an offset) to the current segment.

• Far pointers use segment info and an offset to point across segments. So, to use them, DS or CS must be changed to the specified value, the memory will be dereferenced and then the original value of DS/CS restored. Note that pointer arithmetic on them doesn't modify the segment portion of the pointer, so overflowing the offset will just wrap it around.

• And then there are huge pointers, which are normalized to have the highest possible segment for a given address (contrary to far pointers).

On 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, memory models are using segments differently, or not at all.

Solution 2:

Since nobody mentioned DOS, lets forget about old DOS PC computers and look at this from a generic point-of-view. Then, very simplified, it goes like this:

Any CPU has a data bus, which is the maximum amount of data the CPU can process in one single instruction, i.e equal to the size of its registers. The data bus width is expressed in bits: 8 bits, or 16 bits, or 64 bits etc. This is where the term "64 bit CPU" comes from - it refers to the data bus.

Any CPU has an address bus, also with a certain bus width expressed in bits. Any memory cell in your computer that the CPU can access directly has an unique address. The address bus is large enough to cover all the addressable memory you have.

For example, if a computer has 65536 bytes of addressable memory, you can cover these with a 16 bit address bus, 2^16 = 65536.

Most often, but not always, the data bus width is as wide as the address bus width. It is nice if they are of the same size, as it keeps both the CPU instruction set and the programs written for it clearer. If the CPU needs to calculate an address, it is convenient if that address is small enough to fit inside the CPU registers (often called index registers when it comes to addresses).

The non-standard keywords far and near are used to describe pointers on systems where you need to address memory beyond the normal CPU address bus width.

For example, it might be convenient for a CPU with 16 bit data bus to also have a 16 bit address bus. But the same computer may also need more than 2^16 = 65536 bytes = 64kB of addressable memory.

The CPU will then typically have special instructions (that are slightly slower) which allows it to address memory beyond those 64kb. For example, the CPU can divide its large memory into n pages (also sometimes called banks, segments and other such terms, that could mean a different thing from one CPU to another), where every page is 64kB. It will then have a "page" register which has to be set first, before addressing that extended memory. Similarly, it will have special instructions when calling/returning from sub routines in extended memory.

In order for a C compiler to generate the correct CPU instructions when dealing with such extended memory, the non-standard near and far keywords were invented. Non-standard as in they aren't specified by the C standard, but they are de facto industry standard and almost every compiler supports them in some manner.

far refers to memory located in extended memory, beyond the width of the address bus. Since it refers to addresses, most often you use it when declaring pointers. For example: int * far x; means "give me a pointer that points to extended memory". And the compiler will then know that it should generate the special instructions needed to access such memory. Similarly, function pointers that use far will generate special instructions to jump to/return from extended memory. If you didn't use far then you would get a pointer to the normal, addressable memory, and you'd end up pointing at something entirely different.

near is mainly included for consistency with far; it refers to anything in the addressable memory as is equivalent to a regular pointer. So it is mainly a useless keyword, save for some rare cases where you want to ensure that code is placed inside the standard addressable memory. You could then explicitly label something as near. The most typical case is low-level hardware programming where you write interrupt service routines. They are called by hardware from an interrupt vector with a fixed width, which is the same as the address bus width. Meaning that the interrupt service routine must be in the standard addressable memory.

The most famous use of far and near is perhaps the mentioned old MS DOS PC, which is nowadays regarded as quite ancient and therefore of mild interest.

But these keywords exist on more modern CPUs too! Most notably in embedded systems where they exist for pretty much every 8 and 16 bit microcontroller family on the market, as those microcontrollers typically have an address bus width of 16 bits, but sometimes more than 64kB memory.

Whenever you have a CPU where you need to address memory beyond the address bus width, you will have the need of far and near. Generally, such solutions are frowned upon though, since it is quite a pain to program on them and always take the extended memory in account.

One of the main reasons why there was a push to develop the 64 bit PC, was actually that the 32 bit PCs had come to the point where their memory usage was starting to hit the address bus limit: they could only address 4GB of RAM. 2^32 = 4,29 billion bytes = 4GB. In order to enable the use of more RAM, the options were then either to resort to some burdensome extended memory solution like in the DOS days, or to expand the computers, including their address bus, to 64 bits.

Solution 3:

Far and near pointers were used in old platforms like DOS.

I don't think they're relevant in modern platforms. But you can learn about them here and here (as pointed by other answers). Basically, a far pointer is a way to extend the addressable memory in a computer. I.E., address more than 64k of memory in a 16bit platform.