Question

Discuss the memory organization of 8086 microprocessor

Answer 1

There are 20 address lines in the 8086 microprocessor. This gives us 220 different memory locations. Hence the total size is 220 Bytes (as each memory location is Byte Addressable, i.e. one byte of data can be stored at every single location), which is equal to 1MB.

Even the memory is byte-addressable, yet the 8086 microprocessor an easily handle up to 16 bits of data at a time through its 16 data lines. So, to organize the memory efficiently, the entire memory in 8086 is divided into two memory banks: odd bank and the even bank.