Addresable Memory in a 32-bit processor.

[shakeeb]

Hi,
This is not a programming questions, but i figure most programmers should know.

My Questions is
How much memory can a 32-bit processor access ...?

My Calculations
2^32 bits ==2^12 Megabits==2^2 gigabits,
but in reality the processor can access 2^2 Gigbytes of memory.
What am I doing wrong? I know I am doing something fundamentally wrong, but not sure what ...:mad:

Thanks

[LaRoza]

Hi,
This is not a programming questions, but i figure most programmers should know.

My Questions is
How much memory can a 32-bit processor access ...?

My Calculations
2^32 bits ==2^12 Megabits==2^2 gigabits,
but in reality the processor can access 2^2 Gigbytes of memory.
What am I doing wrong? I know I am doing something fundamentally wrong, but not sure what ...:mad:

Thanks

It doesn't work that way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/32-bit

32 bits is the range in which the address can be encoded. The integer range of 32 bits is: 0 - 4,294,967,295. Any number larger than the upper limit would overflow and the address of the memory at the location would not be reachable. (Very simple, as there are ways around this)

[stroyan]

My Calculations
2^32 bits ==2^12 Megabits==2^2 gigabits,
but in reality the processor can access 2^2 Gigbytes of memory.
What am I doing wrong? I know I am doing something fundamentally wrong, but not sure what ...:mad:

You start with '2^32 bits'. But each address corresponds to one byte.
The minimum addressable data is a byte.

[shakeeb]

You start with '2^32 bits'. But each address corresponds to one byte.
The minimum addressable data is a byte.
So each address of the 2^32 address can access 1 bytes, which would mean memory addressable =2^32*2^3=2^35 bits=2^5 Gigabits=2^2 Gigabytes=4GB ...
exactly what I was missing ...thanks :