- Physical address
In
computing , a physical address, also real address, or binary address, is thememory address that is electronically (in the form of binarynumber ) presented on the computer address bus circuitry in order to enable thedata bus to access a "particular" storage cell ofmain memory .In a computer with
virtual memory , the term "physical address" is used mostly to differentiate from a "virtual address ". In particular, in computers utilizingmemory management unit (MMU) to translate memory addresses, the virtual and physical address refer to address before and after MMU translation, respectively.In
networking , "physical address" is sometimes a synonym ofMAC address . The address is actually used on network'sdata link layer , not onphysical layer , as the name would suggest.Note: There are two basic types of physical addresses when referencing
Ethernet which are large and fixed physical addresses and proNET, which has small relatively easy to configure addresses.Fact| I don't understand this paragraph. Is this merely a confusing and redundant restatement of the previous paragraph, and so can be deleted? |date=September 2008Unaligned addressing
Depending upon its underlying
computer architecture , the performance of a computer may be hindered by "unaligned" access to memory. As an example, a 16 bit computer with a 16 bit memory data bus such as anIntel 8086 generally works most efficiently if the access is aligned to an even address. In that case fetching one 16 bit value requires a single memory read operation, a single transfer over a data bus. Obviously, if the 16 bit data value starts at an odd address, the processor may actually need to perform two memory read cycles to load the value into it, i.e. one for the low address (throwing half of it away) and then a second to load the high address (again throwing half of the retrieved data away).ee also
*
Addressing mode
*Address space
*Primary storage , also known as "main memory"
*Virtual memory
**Virtual address , also known aslogical address
**Page table
**Memory management unit (MMU)
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