
Memory systems 123
Shared memory resolves the bus contention by holding one
of the processors off by inserting wait states into its memory
access. This results in lost performance because the held off
processor cannot do anything and has to wait for the other to
complete. As a result, both processors lose performance because
they are effectively sharing the same bus.
Shared memory is easier to design and is often used when
large memory blocks are needed. Dual port memory is normally
implemented with special hardware and is limited to relatively
small memory blocks of a few kbytes.
Bank switching
Bank switching simply involves having several banks of
memory ...