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If that memory is arranged in a byte-addressable flat address space using 8-bit bytes, then there are 65,536 (2 16) valid addresses, from 0 to 65,535, each denoting an independent 8 bits of memory. If instead it is arranged in a word-addressable flat address space using 32-bit words, then there are 16,384 (2 14 ) valid addresses, from 0 to ...
An eight-bit processor like the Intel 8008 addresses eight bits, but as this is the full width of the accumulator and other registers, this could be considered either byte-addressable or word-addressable. 32-bit x86 processors, which address memory in 8-bit units but have 32-bit general-purpose registers and can operate on 32-bit items with a ...
Alternatively many word-oriented machines implement byte operations with instructions using special byte pointers in registers or memory. For example, the PDP-10 byte pointer contained the size of the byte in bits (allowing different-sized bytes to be accessed), the bit position of the byte within the word, and the word address of the data ...
Very often, when referring to the word size of a modern computer, one is also describing the size of address space on that computer. For instance, a computer said to be "32-bit" also usually allows 32-bit memory addresses; a byte-addressable 32-bit computer can address 2 32 = 4,294,967,296 bytes of memory, or 4 gibibytes (GiB). This allows one ...
In this context, a byte is the smallest unit of memory access, i.e. each memory address specifies a different byte. An n-byte aligned address would have a minimum of log 2 (n) least-significant zeros when expressed in binary. The alternate wording b-bit aligned designates a b/8 byte aligned address (ex. 64-bit aligned is 8 bytes aligned).
When an aggregate is entirely composed of the same type of primitive, the aggregate may be called an array; in a sense, a multi-byte word primitive is an array of bytes, and some programs use words in this way. A pointer is a programming concept used in computer science to reference or point to a memory location that stores a value or an object.
The smallest unit of addressable and writable memory is the 8-bit byte. Bytes can also be held in the lower half of registers R0 through R5. 16-bit words are stored little-endian with least significant bytes at the lower address. Words are always aligned to even memory addresses. Words can be held in registers R0 through R7.
The effective 20-bit address space of real mode limits the addressable memory to 2 20 bytes, or 1,048,576 bytes (1 MB). This derived directly from the hardware design of the Intel 8086 (and, subsequently, the closely related 8088), which had exactly 20 address pins. (Both were packaged in 40-pin DIP packages; even with only 20 address lines ...