Digital Design and Computer Architecture

Chapter 8 Memory systems

8.1 Introduction

8.2 Memory System Performance Analysis

8.3 Caches

8.4 Virtual Memory

8.5 Memory-Mapped I/O^*

8.6 Real-World Perspective: IA-32 Memory and I/O Systems^*

8.7 Summary

Exercises

Interview Questions

8.1 INTRODUCTION

Computer system performance depends on the memory system as well as the processor microarchitecture. Chapter 7 assumed an ideal memory system that could be accessed in a single clock cycle. However, this would be true only for a very small memory—or a very slow processor! Early processors were relatively slow, so memory was able to keep up. But processor speed has increased at a faster rate than memory speeds. DRAM memories are currently 10 to 100 times slower than processors. The increasing gap ...