Re: # of words per chip

Ed Casas (edc@ece.ubc.ca) Tue, 28 Mar 2000 07:43:18 -0800 

Date: Tue, 28 Mar 2000 07:43:18 -0800
From: Ed Casas <edc@ece.ubc.ca>
Subject: Re: # of words per chip



On Tue, Mar 28, 2000 at 09:12:10AM +0000, Po Wah Peter Lau wrote:

> i am just not sure about the # of words in at RAM chip.
> Is it supposed to be 2???  or 4??

A "word" is a group of bits that are treated as a unit.  In
general there is no fixed size for a "word" (although in some
contexts there may be a default value -- often a "word" is taken
to mean a "16-bit word").

In the design of memories the term "word" is used in a number of
different ways.  The size of a memory chip "word" is the memory
chip width (B).  The number of bits provided in parallel by the memory
system is the memory system "word" width.

In this assignment the 64k x 8 chips suppply 8-bit "words."
However, the memory system supplies a 16-bit "word" to the CPU's
16-bit data bus.

-- 
Ed Casas   edc@ece.ubc.ca   http://casas.ece.ubc.ca   +1 604 822-2592