Memory is a collection of cells, in which each cell is capable

of storing a bit of information.

The good memory - fast, large, and inexpensive.

Increased speed and size are achieved at increased cost
Speed depends on data transfer between process and

memory
Maximum size of the memory in any computer is

determined by the addressing scheme.

Processor

kbit
addressbus

Memory

MAR
nbit
databus
MDR

Upto2 kaddressable
locations
Wordlength= nbits

Controllines
R/W
(,MFC,etc.)

In 16 bit addressing (216=64k) 64Kmemory location is used

In 32 bit addressing (232=4G) 4G memory location is used
Two types of byte address are
big endian : used in Motorola
little endian: used in Intel
In 32 bit addressing,
High order 30 bits are used to determines which word will
be accessed.
Low order 2 bits are used to determines which byte in the
is accessed.

MAR uses k bit address bus, thus 2k addressable location

available
MDR uses n bit data bus for data transfer
MAR,MDR read and write operation
Reading data :loading the address of the required memory
location into the MAR register and setting the R/W line to 1.
The memory responds by placing the data from the addressed
location onto the data lines
Upon receipt of the MFC signal, the processor loads the data
on the data lines into the MDR register

 Measures

for the speed of a memory:

memory access time.

memory cycle time.

An

important design issue is to provide

a computer system with as large and
fast a memory as possible, within a
given cost target.
Several techniques to increase the
effective size and speed of the
memory:
Cache memory (to increase the effective speed).
Virtual memory (to increase the effective size).