10.2 Memory Management

Let’s review what we said about main memory in Chapter 5. All programs are stored in main memory when they are executed. All data referenced by those programs are also stored in main memory so that they can be accessed. Main memory can be thought of as a big, continuous chunk of space divided into groups of 8, 16, or 32 bits. Each byte or word of memory has a corresponding address, which is simply an integer that uniquely identifies that particular part of memory. See FIGURE 10.4. The first memory address is 0.

A figure represents the main memory with addresses ranging from 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to 20347 with a callout pointing it reads, 01100111, 20348, 20349, 20350, 20351, and so on.

FIGURE 10.4 Memory is a continuous set of bits referenced by specific addresses

Earlier in this chapter ...

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