How many bytes does it take to store a memory address?

Most commonly, modern systems are what you call “byte-accessible”. This means: One memory location stores 1 byte (8 bits).

Does every byte in memory have a unique address?

Each data byte has a unique address. A 32-bit word consists of four 8-bit bytes. So each word address is a multiple of 4, as shown in Figure 6.2. Again, both the 32-bit word address and the data value are given in hexadecimal.

How much memory can be addressed using a 12 bit CPU?

12 binary digits, or 3 nibbles (a ‘tribble’), have 4096 (10000 octal, 1000 hexadecimal) distinct combinations. Hence, a microprocessor with 12-bit memory addresses can directly access 4096 words (4 Kw) of word-addressable memory.

How are addresses stored in memory?

When writing to memory, the CPU writes data from MDR to the memory location whose address is stored in MAR. MAR, which is found inside the CPU, goes either to the RAM (random-access memory) or cache. For example, the next address to be read or written.

Does each byte have an address?

One byte usually has one address although some architectures require memory access to be aligned.

How many bits are required to address an element in the memory of the memory is byte-addressable?

For instance, a computer said to be “32-bit” also usually allows 32-bit memory addresses; a byte-addressable 32-bit computer can address 232 = 4,294,967,296 bytes of memory, or 4 gibibytes (GiB). This allows one memory address to be efficiently stored in one word. However, this does not always hold true.

Why is memory byte-addressable?

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. The IBM 7094 has 15-bit addresses, so could address 32,768 words of 36 bits.