Why does my 32-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 system with a SATA controller run out of memory very quickly?

Release Found: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

Symptom:

The system is running a 32 bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 SMP kernel with a SATA controller (using the ata_piix driver). The system runs out of memory very quickly. This happens only on systems with more than 4GB and less than 16GB of memory, the latter of which requires the hugemem ...