We call it "pointer compression" now. :)

It was glorious I tell you.

Especially how you could increase the segment value by one or the offset by 16 and you would address the same memory location. Think of the possibilities!

And if you wanted more than 1MB you could just switch memory banks[1] to get access to a different part of memory. Later there was a newfangled alternative[2] where you called some interrupt to swap things around but it wasn't as cool. Though it did allow access to more memory so there was that.

Then virtual mode came along and it's all been downhill from there.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_memory

[2]: https://hackaday.com/2025/05/15/remembering-more-memory-xms-...

And turned out we have the transistors to avoid it, but it's a really good optimization for CPUs nowadays.

At least most people design non-overlaping segments. And I'm not sure wasm would gain anything from it, being a virtual machine instead of real.

wait.... UNREAL MODE!