Data Structure
Networking
RDBMS
Operating System
Java
MS Excel
iOS
HTML
CSS
Android
Python
C Programming
C++
C#
MongoDB
MySQL
Javascript
PHP
Physics
Chemistry
Biology
Mathematics
English
Economics
Psychology
Social Studies
Fashion Studies
Legal Studies
- Selected Reading
- UPSC IAS Exams Notes
- Developer's Best Practices
- Questions and Answers
- Effective Resume Writing
- HR Interview Questions
- Computer Glossary
- Who is Who
Difference between Byte Addressable Memory and Word Addressable Memory
Memory plays a vital role in any computer system and it is very important to understand how it works and how it stores the data. In general, we know that computer memory stores the data after converting into bits or bytes (which is nothing but collection of bits). In this article, we are going to explain how this storage take place and how to address those storage blocks.
Data, or in simple language, every word that we provide to a computer system is being stored in a memory, whether in temporary cache or permanent memory. But before storing it to memory, there is conversion of word into bits. Now the collection of these bits is going to be stored in the memory. The memory of a computer system is divided into chunks or we can say "sections" which basically hold the converted bits.
What is Word Addressable Memory?
Let us take an example. Suppose your computer memory configuration is 4096 * 32 bit which means that it has 4096 locations or sections and each of these sections can hold a word of size 32 bits. And let us suppose the address of the first section among 4096 sections is 'i', then the address of its subsequent section would be 'i+1' and of next is 'i+3', and so on. This type of addressing in which we treat each section of memory which is that storage of 32 bits or 4 bytes is known as Word Addressable Memory.
What is Byte Addressable Memory?
Continuing with the same example, we have a total of 4096 sections and each section stores a word of length 32 bits or simply 4 bytes. We can access each of these sections by adding one consecutive number to its current location, i.e., 'i', then next location is 'i+1', then 'i+2', and so on.
If the memory section which is storing the words is further treated as subsections of 4, i.e., as each section which is storing a word of 4 byte is divided in 4 subsection and each subsection is storing 1 byte.
Let us suppose that each subsection has an address, now each subsection has address like 'j' next would be 'j+1' then 'j+3' and so on. If we take the address of one section as 'j', then the address of the next section would be 'j+4', then for the next would be 'j+8', and so on.
This type of addressing in which the number of subsections, i.e., number of bytes stored in a section is added to get the address of the next section is known as Byte Addressable Memory.
If we take 'i' address in Word Addressable memory and 'j' in Byte Addressable memory address, then 'i' = 'j' ; 'i=1' = 'j+4' ; 'i=3' = 'j+8', and so on.
Difference between Byte Addressable Memory and Word Addressable Memory
The following are the important differences between byte addressable memory and word addressable memory −
S.No. |
Byte Addressable Memory |
Word Addressable Memory |
|---|---|---|
1. |
Byte addressable memory is one in which the data space in a cell is equal to 8 bits or 1 byte. |
Word addressable memory is one in which the data space in a cell is equal to the word length of the CPU. |
2. |
It is called byte addressable memory because it uses bytewise storage configuration. |
It is called word addressable memory because it uses wordwise storage configuration. |
3. |
Byte addressable memory is best suited for the processes that need a single byte data at a time. |
Word addressable memory is suitable for processes that requires data comprising single word at a time. |
4. |
The byte addressable memory issues a single address for accessing a single byte. |
The word accessible memory issues the address of word that contains required byte. |
5. |
Byte addressable memory is a default memory configuration in computer design. |
Word addressable memory is not a default configuration. |
6. |
A memory chip with 64K × 8 has 16 bit address and cell size equal to 8 bits, i.e. 1 byte. |
For a 16-bit processor, a memory chip with 64K × 16 has 16 bit address and cell size equal to 16 bits, i.e. word length of processor. |
7. |
Byte addressable memory chip stores data byte by byte. |
Word addressable memory chip stores data word by word. |
Conclusion
Both Byte addressable memory and Word addressable memory have address size that can be of any number of bits depending upon the number of cells in memory chip. But, the cell size is different in each case.
The most significant difference that you should note here is that byte addressable memory uses bytewise data storage, whereas word addressable memory uses wordwise data storage.
5K+ Views
