Two dimensional 512 byte (byte addressable) RAM from 16 byte chips

computer-architecture

Assume it is decided to design a two dimensional 512 byte (byte addressable) RAM from 16 byte chips. Each of the 16 byte chips has two select-lines. The chip is enabled only if both of the select-lines are activated. Your design must use only decoders of size 3 X 8 and 2 X 4. Need to show the components, the connections and size of each component!

Best Answer

We have 512B of memory RAM and the size of each chip is 16B. Therefore, we need 512B/16B = 32 chips. Memory address register needs to address 16B = 2^4B. Thus, we need 4 bits to address single chip. The 9bits needed in total minus the already used 4 bits (512B=2^9, 16B=2^4) and we are left with 5bits for decoding. We are ask to design a two dimensional RAM with decoders of size 3 to 8 and/or 2 to 4. So, we use 2bits for decoder 2 to 4 and the left 3 bits for the 3 to 8 decoder. We get a two dimensional RAM 4X8 which is equal 32.