Why does creating a new array throw OutOfMemoryException?

Question

This one throws an OutOfMemoryException.

Target framework .NET 3.5, running on a 64-bit Windows 2008 R2 Standard.

using System;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            byte[] test = new byte[Int32.MaxValue];
        }
    }
}

According to documentation, array length must simply be a positive 32-bit integer but apparently that is not the only restriction to look out for.

Why does memory run out in this case?

Answer 1

That is 2 gigabytes of ram. Max value of 32 bit int is 2147483647, converted to megabytes is 2048, or 2 gigabytes. The machine may actually have run out of memory. See: Maximum Memory a .NET process can allocate