Is memory byte-addressable?

Is memory byte-addressable?

In reality, memory is only byte addressable. It means: A binary address always points to a single byte only. A word is just a group of bytes – 2 , 4 , 8 depending upon the data bus size of the CPU.

What is addressable unit of memory?

In general it means the smallest data item you can access with a unique address. Some computers have byte-addressable memory which means that each byte of data in memory has a unique address.

What is the byte address of memory word?

When the data space in the cell = 8 bits then the corresponding address space is called as Byte Address. When the data space in the cell = word length of CPU then the corresponding address space is called as Word Address.

What is memory addressable?

A memory address is a unique identifier used by a device or CPU for data tracking. Modern computers are addressed by bytes which are assigned to memory addresses – binary numbers assigned to a random access memory (RAM) cell that holds up to one byte.

Is x86 byte-addressable?

The x86 Intel architecture is also byte addressable. If we have an integer-sized piece of data, we may want to identify the various bits. This can be done by numbering the bits.

How many words are addressable in main memory?

If we divide the available amount of memory by the number of addresses we get approximately 488.2 bytes as a result, meaning that as long as the size of a word does not exceed 488 bytes the memory can hold 65,536 words.

Why is MIPs byte addressable?

for MIPs 32-bit, the main memory has a 32-bit address input bus, each slot in memory holds 8-bit, so each address can refer to 8-bits of memory (which is why its byte addressable); since register size is 32-bit, “words” in main memory start at every 4th byte (so that each word is 4 consecutive slots in memory – 4 * 8 = …

What is byte-addressable?

Byte addressing refers to hardware architectures which support accessing individual bytes. The 386SX, which addresses memory in 8-bit units but can fetch and store it 16 bits at a time, is termed byte-addressable. The advantage of word addressing is that more memory can be addressed in the same number of bits.

What is meant by bit addressable and byte-addressable?

They are not really using the terms right, byte addressable is what we are used to an address represents a unique byte in memory or the memory space. Bit addressable would mean that each bit in the memory space has a unique address, which is not the case.

What is bit and byte addressable?

What is the maximum addressable memory?

The maximum size of addressable memory has a limit, which is most likely to be defined by the word size of the chip. Examples of chips applying this scheme are the Freescale Coldfire and the Zilog Z80. Typically, addresses start at zero and go up to a maximum value.

What does byte addressable mean?

Byte addressable means that every byte has its own unique address and can be accessed. Word addressable means that every word has its own unique address and can be accessed. So, consider word addressable memory, considering word being 4 byte, you can read an “address” and you will get word of data i.e. 4 bytes.

How many bytes in a memory address?

Memory can be though of as an array of bytes where each address is on index in the array and holds 1 byte. If a computer has 4K of memory, it would have 4096 addresses in the memory array.

What is the memory address of the first byte?

The beginning address of the tape (or memory) is determined by the OS. For this example, the byte at the address 0x8000 contains the data 0xD5. In modern computer architectures, one memory address points to one byte. Therefore, the address of the next byte is 0x8001, which contains the data 0xF3.