Memory

Memories hold one or more bits of information:

 Data (Integers, Reals, Text)

 CPU Instructions (i.e. Computer programs)
 Memory Addresses ("Pointers" to data or instructions)

The contents of a memory remain unchanged unless overwritten with a new bit pattern.
For some memories the contents are "lost" when power to the memory is turned off.

Computers employ many different types of memory (semi-conductor memory, magnetic

disks and tapes, CD-ROMs etc.) to hold data and programs. Each type of memory has its
own characteristics and uses.

Register Memory

Registers are memories located within the Central Processing Unit (CPU). They are few in
number (there are rarely more than 64 registers) and also small in size, typically a register
is less than 64 bits in size.

The contents of a register can be “read” or “written” very quickly however, often an order
of magnitude faster than main memory and several orders of magnitude faster than disk
memory.

Different kinds of register are found within the CPU. General Purpose Registers are
available for general use by the programmer. Unless the context implies otherwise we’ll
use the term "Register" to refer to a General Purpose Register within the CPU. Most
modern CPU’s have between 16 and 64 General Purpose Registers. Special Purpose
Registers have special uses and are either nonprogrammable and internal to the CPU or
accessed with special instructions by the programmer.

Examples of such registers include:

 Program Counter/Instruction Pointer Register (PC/IP)

 Instruction Register (IR)
 ALU Input & Output Registers
 Condition Code (Status/Flags) Register
  Stack Pointer Register (SP)

Although Register Size (the size of the Register bit-group) tends to vary according to
register type, the Word Size of an Architecture is often (but not always!) defined by the
Size of the General Purpose Registers.

In contrast to Main memory and disk memory, registers are “addressed” directly by
specific instructions or by encoding a register number within a computer instruction. At the
programming (assembly) language level of the CPU, registers are normally specified with
special identifiers (e.g. R0, R1, R7, SP, PC)

A final point, the contents of a register are lost if power to the CPU is turned off, so
registers are unsuitable for holding long-term information or information that is needed for
retention after a power-shutdown or failure. Registers are however, the fastest memories,
and if exploited can result in programs that execute very quickly.

Main Memory (RAM)

If we were to sum all the bits of all registers within CPU, the total amount of memory
probably would not exceed 5,000 bits. Most computational tasks undertaken by a
computer require a lot more memory. Main memory is the next fastest memory within a
Computer and is much larger in size.

Typical main memory capacities for different kinds of computers are:

Personal Computer 256MB

Fileserver 4GB
Database Mainframe 32GB

Computer Architectures also impose an architectural constraint on the maximum allowable

RAM. This constraint is normally equal to 2WordSize memory locations

RAM (Random Access Memory) is the most common form of Main Memory. RAM is
normally located on the motherboard and so is typically less than 12 inches from the CPU.
ROM (Read Only Memory) is like RAM except that its contents cannot be overwritten.
ROM memory is often used to store the “boot” or start-up program that a computer
executes when powered on.

Although slower than register memory, the contents of any location in RAM can still be
“read” or “written” very quickly. The time to read or write is referred to as the access time
and is the same for all RAM locations.

In contrast to register memory, RAM is used to hold both program code (instructions) and
data (numbers, strings etc). Programs that are running are normally “loaded” into RAM
from a disk prior to execution by the CPU.

Locations in RAM are identified by an addressing scheme e.g. numbering the bytes in
RAM from 0 onwards. The contents of RAM are lost if the power is turned off.

Disk Memory
Disk memory is used to hold programs and data over the longer term. The contents of a
disk are NOT lost if the power is turned off. Disk capacities range from 2GB to over 40 GB
(40 × 109). Disks are much slower than Register and Main memory, the access-time to
data on disk is typically between 5 and 15 milliseconds (5 × 10-3 sec), although disks can
typically transfer hundreds or thousands of bytes in one go.

Disks can be housed internally within a Computer “box” or externally. There are also many
kinds of Disk unit, e.g: Magnetic Hard Disks, Floppy Disks (V. Slow), Magneto-Optical CD
Roms/Disks, DVDs.

Disk locations are identified by special disk addressing schemes (e.g. track and sector
numbers).

Summary of Characteristics

Main Memory Organisation

We can imagine Main Memory to be organised as a matrix of bits. Each row represents a
memory location, typically this is equal to the word size of the architecture, although it can
be a word multiple (e.g. 2xWordsize) or a partial word (e.g. half the wordsize). For
simplicity we will assume that data within Main memory can only be read or written a
single row (memory location) at a time.

For a 96-bit memory we could organise the memory as 12 × 8 bits, or 8 × 12 bits or 6 × 16
bits, or even as 96 × 1 bits or 1 × 96 bits. Each row also has a natural number Address
which is used for selecting the row:
 Byte Addressing

Main-memories generally store and recall rows, which are multi-byte in length (e.g. 16-bit
word = 2 bytes, 32-bit word = 4 bytes). Most architectures however, make Main Memory
byte-addressable rather than word addressable. In such architectures the CPU and/or the
Main Memory hardware is capable of reading/writing any individual byte. Here is an
example of a Main memory with 16-bit memory locations. Note how the memory locations
(rows) have even addresses.
 Byte Ordering

The bytes within a multi-byte data item can be numbered from Left-to-Right (Big-Endian)
or from Right-to-Left (Little-Endian). In the following example, table cells represent bytes,
and the cell numbers indicate the address of that byte in Main Memory.

In Big-Endian systems the most significant byte of a multi-byte data item has the lowest
address, while the least significant byte has the highest address.

In Little-Endian systems, the least significant byte of a multi-byte data item has the lowest
address, while the most significant byte has the highest address. Note: an N-character
string value is not treated as one large multi-byte value, but rather as N single character
values, i.e. the first character of the string always has the lowest address, the last
character has the highest address. This is true for both big-endian and little-endian.

Example: Show the contents of memory at word address 24 if that word holds the number
given by 122E 5F01H in both the big-endian and the little-endian schemes?

Note: By convention, we order the bytes within a memory word left-to-right for big-endian
and right-to-left for little-endian.

Example: Show the contents of main memory from word address 24 if those words hold
the text JIM SMITH.
The bytes labelled with ? are unknown. They could hold important data, or they could be
don’t care bytes – the interpretation is left up to the programmer.

Unfortunately computer systems, in use today are split between those that are big-endian,
and those that are little-endian. This leads to problems when a big-endian computer wants
to transfer data to a little-endian computer. Some recent architectures (e.g. PowerPC)
allow the endian-ness of the architecture to be switched programmatically.

Word Alignment

Although main-memories are generally organised as byte-addressed rows of words and

accessed a row at a time, some architectures, allow the CPU to access any word-sized
bit-group regardless of its byte address. We say that accesses that begin on a memory
word boundary are aligned accesses while accesses that do not begin on word
boundaries are unaligned accesses.

Reading an unaligned word from RAM requires

1. Reading of adjacent words

2. Selecting the required bytes from each word
3. Concatenating those bytes together => SLOW

Writing an unaligned word is even more complex and SLOWER. For this reason some
architectures prohibit unaligned word accesses. e.g. On the 68000 architecture, words
must not be accessed starting from an odd-address (e.g. 1, 3, 5, 7 etc). Some
architectures extend this principle to multi-word accesses. e.g. on the SPARC
architecture, 64-bit data items must have a byte address that is a multiple of 8.

RAM Integrated Circuits (Chips)

So far, we have looked at the logical organisation of Main Memory. Physically RAM chips
can be organised in a variety of ways also. Here are 3 methods for forming a 256x8 bit
main memory.
In the first case, Main memory is built with a single RAM chip. In the second we use two
RAM chips, one gives us the most significant 4 bits, the other, the least significant 4 bits.
In the third we use 8 RAM chips, each chip gives us 1 bit - to read an 8 bit memory word,
we would have to access all 8 RAM chips simultaneously and concatenate the bits.

Memory Banks

Main memories are normally bigger than the size of a single RAM chip. Therefore to
access a memory word the memory hardware has to read a row in several RAM chips
simultaneously and then concatenate the returned results from each RAM chip.

The RAM chips that make up a main-memory system, are normally grouped into banks
that are one memory word wide:

Example: Given Main Memory = 1M × 16 bit (word addressable),

RAM chips = 256K × 4 bit

BANK size = RAM chips per memory word = Width of Memory Word / Width of RAM
Chip = 16/4 = 4

18 bits are required to address a RAM chip (since 256K = 218 = Length of RAM Chip)

A 1M × 16 bit word-addressed memory requires 20 address bits (since 1M = 220).

Therefore 2 bits (20−18) are needed to select a bank.

The Total number of RAM Chips = (1M × 16) / (256K × 4) = 16

Total number of BANKS = Total number of RAM chips / BANK size = 16/4 = 4

Interleaved Memory
When memory consists of several banks, some address bits will select the bank, and the
remaining bits will select a row within the selected bank.

If the bank selection bits are the least significant bits of the memory address the resulting
memory is referred to as low-order interleaved.

If the bank selection bits are the most significant bits of the memory address the resulting
memory is referred to as high-order interleaved.

Interleaved memory can yield performance advantages if more than one bank can be
read/written at a time:-

i. For low-order interleave if the same row in each bank can be read

This is an advantage for a single multi-word access of sequential data such as

program instructions, or elements in an array of data.

ii. For high-order interleave, if different banks can be independently accessed by

different units.

This is an advantage if the CPU can access rows in one bank while at the same
time an I/O device (hard disk, etc.) can access different rows in another bank.

Example: Main Memory = 1M × 8bits, RAM chips = 256K × 4bit.

For this memory we require 4 × 2 = 8 RAM chips.

Each chip requires 18 address bits (ie. 218 = 256K).

And 1M × 8 bits requires 20 address bits (ie. 220 = 1M )