Answer to Question #93016 in Programming & Computer Science for Joe Root

Question

If the size of the program counter is 16 bits, what can be the maximum size of the memory in computer architecture provided the data width is 8 bits?

Answer 1

The size of the program counter (16 bits) sets the maximum number of addressable memory cells – 2¹⁶. The size of each memory cell is 8 bits (one byte). So, the maximum size of memory is 2¹⁶ bytes (65,536 bytes – 64kB).