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I had a question in my past System Architecture exam and I am not sure how to solve it.

Question was this:

Consider a 16-bit addressable memory and a direct-mapped cache sized 64 bytes. MAR is 10 bits and a block in memory is 8 bytes sized. Find $t$, $r$ and $w$ (they are Tag, cache index, and block offset respectively.)

Can you show steps of solution of this and such questions? Should I divide cache size by 2 since it is 2 byte addressable? Thanks.

Muhammed Gül
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1 Answers1

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I think i found out the solution, may be helpful for others reading this.

The size of a block is 8 bytes. And the memory is adressed with 2 bytes. So each block contains 4 words (considering 1 adressible unit = 1 word).

4 = 2^2, Then $w$ = 2 bits

Since cache has a size of 64 bytes which is 2^6, than $r$ + $w$ must be 6.

$r$ + $w$ = 6, $w$ = 2 so $r$ = 6-2 = 4 bits

Lastly the MAR is 10 bits so the length of RA ($r$ + $w$ + $t$) must be 10.

$r$ + $w$ + $t$ = 10, $r$ + $w$ = 6, then $t$ = 10 - 6 = 4 bits .

So the RA distribution will be like:

+----------------------------------------+
| t = 4 |       r = 4      |    w = 2    |
+----------------------------------------+
Muhammed Gül
  • 121
  • 3