Question

If the memory address space is 16 MB and the word size is 8 bits, then 24 bits are needed to access each word. 13. DRAM is a memory type with capacitors that need to be refreshed periodically. 14. There are 2^16 bytes in 16 Terabytes. 15. PROM is a type of memory in which the user, not the manufacturer, stores programs that cannot be overwritten. 16. A CD-R is a storage device to which the user can write information only once 17. The smallest storage area on a magnetic disk that can be accessed at one time is a sector. 18. A control bus with eight wires can define 256 operations. Assignment Submission Form_10/05/2011 How many bits wide memory address have to be if the computer had 16 MB of memory?

a) 18 bits
b) 20 bits
c) 22 bits
d) 24 bits

Answer 1

The memory address must be 24 bits wide.

Step-by-step explanation:

The memory address space is 16 MB, which is equivalent to 16,000,000 bytes. The word size is 8 bits, so each word requires 8 bits to be accessed. To calculate the number of bits needed to access each word of memory, we need to find the logarithm base 2 of the number of bytes in the memory address space. In this case, we have:

log2(16,000,000) = 23.90 bits

Since the number of bits needed to access each word must be a whole number, we round up to the nearest whole number, which is 24 bits.

Therefore, the memory address must be 24 bits wide.