Chapter 6 - Bus Organization and Memory Design

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the need for bus organization within a computer system and describes the way busses are organized into address, data, and status busses. It discusses how the microcode state machine works with the bus organization to control the flow of data on internal busses. It uses the principles of tri-state logic to design bus oriented systems and explains the way the tri-state buffer circuit enables individual memory cells to be organized into larger memory arrays. The chapter introduces the concept of paging as a way to form memory addresses and as a method to build memory systems. It emphasizes on the different types of modern memory technology to understand the use of static random access memory (RAM) technology and dynamic RAM technology. The chapter concludes the overview of memory with a discussion on direct memory access as an efficient way to move the blocks of data between memory and peripheral devices.