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The maximum random access memory (RAM) installed in any computer system is limited by hardware, software and economic factors. The hardware may have a limited number of address bus bits, limited by the processor package or design of the system. Some of the address space may be shared between RAM, peripherals, and read-only memory.
The CPU in modern computer hardware performs reads and writes to memory most efficiently when the data is naturally aligned, which generally means that the data's memory address is a multiple of the data size. For instance, in a 32-bit architecture, the data may be aligned if the data is stored in four consecutive bytes and the first byte lies ...
The efficiency of addressing of memory depends on the bit size of the bus used for addresses – the more bits used, the more addresses are available to the computer. For example, an 8-bit-byte-addressable machine with a 20-bit address bus (e.g. Intel 8086) can address 2 20 (1,048,576) memory locations, or one MiB of memory, while a 32-bit bus ...
A 64 bit memory chip die, the SP95 Phase 2 buffer memory produced at IBM mid-1960s, versus memory core iron rings 8GB DDR3 RAM stick with a white heatsink. Random-access memory (RAM; / r æ m /) is a form of electronic computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store working data and machine code.
Historical lowest retail price of computer memory and storage Electromechanical memory used in the IBM 602, an early punch multiplying calculator Detail of the back of a section of ENIAC, showing vacuum tubes Williams tube used as memory in the IAS computer c. 1951 8 GB microSDHC card on top of 8 bytes of magnetic-core memory (1 core is 1 bit.)
A memory bank is a part of cache memory that is addressed consecutively in the total set of memory banks, i.e., when data item a(n) is stored in bank b, data item a(n + 1) is stored in bank b + 1. Cache memory is divided in banks to evade the effects of the bank cycle time (see above) [=> missing "bank cycle" definition, above]. When data is ...
The barrier was only overcome with the arrival of DOS extenders, which allowed DOS applications to run in 16-bit or 32-bit protected mode, but these were not very widely used outside of computer gaming. With a 32-bit DOS extender, a game could benefit from a 32-bit flat address space and the full 32-bit instruction set without the 66h/67h ...
Many 32-bit computers have 32 physical address bits and are thus limited to 4 GiB (2 32 words) of memory. [3] [4] x86 processors prior to the Pentium Pro have 32 or fewer physical address bits; however, most x86 processors since the Pentium Pro, which was first sold in 1995, have the Physical Address Extension (PAE) mechanism, [5]: 445 which allows addressing up to 64 GiB (2 36 words) of memory.