MEMORY LOCATIONS, ADDRESSES & INFORMATION ENCODING
Memory locations consist of millions of storage cells which can store a binary digit or bit
having value 0 or 1. Group of n bits, called as a word of information can be stored and
retrieved in a single basic operation. Here n is the word length – ranging from 16 to 64 bits
Accessing the main memory requires address for each word location 0 to 2k – 1; for some
suitable value of k address lines or k address bits. i.e. Main memory of this computer can
have up to 2k words. For example a 24 bit address generates an address space of
224 (16777216) locations ≡16M and a 32 bit address creates an address space of 232 or 4G.
Contents of the memory locations can represent either instructions or operands. Operands
can be either numbers or characters.
Fig 2.1 Main Memory Address
Address n bits Word
0 word 0
2.1.1 1 word 1
.
.
.
.
i bn-1 . . . . . . b1 b0 word i
.
.
.
.
2k -1 word 2k -1
Representation of Numbers in main memory
Consider a 32 bit pattern is used to represent a signed integer
32 bits
b31 b30 b1 b0
Fig 2.2
Sign bit : b31 = 0 for positive numbers
= 1 for negative numbers
Magnitude = b30 . 230 + b29 . 229 + . . . . . + b1 . 21 + b0 . 20
Magnitude can range from 0 to 231 – 1 and the numbers are said to be in binary positional
notation. The above encoding format is called Signed Magnitude representation. The other
two binary representations are 1’s compliment and 2’s compliment representations.
Representation of positive numbers is the same in the three cases. The difference is only in
the negative number representation. In all the three methods the left most bit is the sign bit
(i.e.0 represents positive number and 1 represents negative number) 2’s compliment method
is the most suitable one and is used in all modern computers.
2.1.2 Representation of Characters in main memory
Characters can be letters of the alphabet, decimal digits, punctuation marks etc. They are
represented by codes that are usually 6 – 8 bits long.
Fig 2.3 shows how 4 characters in ASCII can be stored in a 32 bit word.
8 bits 8 bits 8 bits 8 bits
ASCII ASCII ASCII ASCII
Character Character Character Character
Fig 2.3
2.1.3 Representation of Instructions in main memory
A main memory word can also be used to represent an instruction. One part of the word
specifies the operation to be performed and the other part specifies operand address. Each of
these parts are called as ‘field’.
8 bits 24 bits
Operation Addressing information
field
Fig 2.4
Here the 8 bit operation field can encode 28 (256) distinct instructions.
Addressing information is given in a variety of ways. The different ways in which
operands can be named in machine instructions are called addressing modes.
Memory words whose addresses are specified by the instructions are interpreted as
operands. Whether an operand is a character or a numeric data item is determined by the
operation field of the instruction.
An operand may be either shorter or longer than one word. An operand length of 8 bit
is convenient, because this size is used to encode character data. An 8 bit data is called a
byte.
2.2 BIG-ENDIAN AND LITTLE ENDIAN ASSIGNMENTS
To enable instructions to refer to individual bytes, the smallest addressable unit in most
computers is a byte rather than a word and such computers are called byte addressable.
Individual bytes can be addressed in a byte addressable computer. If the word length is
32 bits, then 4 bytes can be placed in a word.
The two different schemes used are :-
i. i)Big-Endian Assignment
ii. ii)Little-Endian Assignment
Big-Endian: lower byte addresses are used for the most significant bytes of the
word
Little-Endian: opposite ordering. lower byte addresses are used for the less
significant bytes of the word
In Big-endian assignment, bytes are numbered starting with most significant byte of a word.
Word is given the same address as its most significant byte (used in 68000 & Power PC
processors)
In Little-endian assignment, bytes are numbered from least significant byte of a word. Word
is given the address of its least significant byte.
Both the assignments are used in commercial machines. In both cases, byte addresses 0, 4,
8, . . are taken as the addresses of successive words in the memory. These addresses are used
when specifying memory read and write operations for words.
Word Byte Address Word Byte Address
Address Addres
s
0 0 1 2 3 0 3 2 1 0
4 4 5 6 7 4 7 6 5 4
. .
. .
. .
2k - 4 2k - 4 2k - 3 2k - 2 2k - 1 2k - 4 2k - 1 2k - 2 2k - 3 2k - 4
Fig 2.5(i) Big-endian Fig 2.5(ii) Little-endian
assignment assignment
Word alignment
Words are said to be aligned in memory if they begin at a byte addr.
that is a multiple of the num of bytes in a word.
• 16-bit word: word addresses: 0, 2, 4,….
• 32-bit word: word addresses: 0, 4, 8,….
• 64-bit word: word addresses: 0, 8, 16,….
2.3 MAIN MEMORY OPERATIONS
To execute an instruction, the instructions must be transferred from the main memory to the
CPU. This is done by the CPU control circuits.
Operands and results must also be moved between the main memory and the CPU. Thus two
basic operations involving the main memory are needed namely
Load (or Fetch or Read)
Store (or Write)
Load operation: Transfers a copy of the contents of a specific memory location to the CPU.
Word in the main memory remains unchanged. To start a Load or Fetch operation, CPU
sends the address of the desired location to the main memory and requests to read its
contents. The main memory reads the data stored at that address and sends them to the CPU.
Store operation: Transfers a word of information from the CPU to a specific main
memory location, destroying the former contents of that location. Here the CPU sends the
address of the desired location to the main memory, together with the data to be written to
that location.
2.3 INSTRUCTIONS AND INSTRUCTION SEQUENCING
A computer must have instructions capable of performing four types of operations
1. Data transfers between the main memory and the CPU registers
2. Arithmetic and logic operations on data
3. Program sequencing and control
4. I/O transfers
Example computer instruction format: -
Uses multiple words of 16 bits –
Opcode Address Infor
4bits 12bits
Typical instruction is Add: C = A+B
- Most general instruction is to add 2 numbers in memory and store
in a 3rd location
Add A, B, C
[A]+[B] ->C
Notations used:-
a. a)Register Transfer Notation (RTN):- Possible locations involved
in transfer of information are memory location, CPU registers or registers in
the I/O subsystem. We identify the names for the addresses of
memory location as LOC, PLACE, A, VAR2 etc and the names for CPU
registers as R0, R5 etc. The contents of a location or a register are denoted by
placing the corresponding name between square brackets.
E.g. i) R1 ← [LOC] means that the contents of
memory location LOC are
transferred into register R1.
ii) R3 ← [R1] + [R2] adds the contents of registers R1
and R2 and then
places their sum into register R3.
a. b)Assembly Language Notation:- The same operations can be represented
in assembly language format as shown below.
E.g. i) Move LOC, R1
ii) Add R1,R2,R3
