Memory Organisation in Computer Architecture

The memory is organized in the form of a cell, each cell is able to be identified with a unique number called address. Each cell is able to recognize control signals such as “read” and “write”, generated by CPU when it wants to read or write address. Whenever CPU executes the program there is a need to transfer the instruction from the memory to CPU because the program is available in memory. To access the instruction CPU generates the memory request.

Memory Request:
Memory request contains the address along with the control signals. For Example, When inserting data into the stack, each block consumes memory (RAM) and the number of memory cells can be determined by the capacity of a memory chip.

Example: Find the total number of cells in 64k*8 memory chip.

Size of each cell = 8
Number of bytes in 64k = (2^6)*(2^10)

Therefore, 
the total number of cells = 2^16 cells 

With the number of cells, the number of address lines required to enable one cell can be determined.

Word Size:
It is the maximum number of bits that a CPU can process at a time and it depends upon the processor. Word size is a fixed size piece of data handled as a unit by the instruction set or the hardware of a processor.

Word size varies as per the processor architectures because of generation and the present technology, it could be low as 4-bits or high as 64-bits depending on what a particular processor can handle. Word size is used for a number of concepts like Addresses, Registers, Fixed-point numbers, Floating-point numbers.