I can imagine a machine where it makes sense to assume that the memory needs for int arrays are going to be far less than the memory needs for char arrays.
One may specify, for instance, that an implementation is not going to use more than 10 dynamically allocated integers, but is free to allocate many char arrays. In this case, one byte may suffice for an int*, while a char* needs to be four bytes or more.
That's a theoretical vision.
