CODEWITHSUNDEEP
variablesmemory
user11615
user11615

Reputation: 51

How variables are stored in RAM memory?

I've just made a simple RAM memory in Minecraft (with redstone), with 4bits for the adress and 4bits stored in each cell. Our next goal is to store different kinds of variables in it and to process them differently.

We are not engineers, so we don't really know, but we have made some quite complex things and we think we can do this. The problem is that we can't figure out how to store variables of more bits that can be stored in a single cell. I'll give an example.

Think of a 16bit variable. We thought that there's no sense in creating big cells so we decided to store that data storing 4bits in each cell. But that's not enough, we had to relate those 4 cells. So we thought that we had to create 8bit cells, with 4bits of content and 4bits to store the address where the next 4bits of the variable are stored. However, 4bits of address is nothing for RAM, we can't store nothing there. So we would need at least 8bits for the address. 4bits of content also seems quite low, and we also need at least other 4bits to store the type of the variable.

Well, finally we thought that technique was absurd and that it coudn't be done like that in real life. And we don't know how to do it now. I've searched on the web about how RAM works and the few that I've find was too complex for our needs.

Could someone please explain us how this is done in real life?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2786

Answers (1)

Blindy
Blindy

Reputation: 67380

Heh you're playing the blame game, trying to pin all the responsibility of memory management on the physical RAM implementation.

In fact, RAM is just that, a storage device (your redstone tiles), actually storing data in it is your program's responsibility. Put in other words, there doesn't need to be a standardized memory cell "linking" strategy for RAM, because it's your program that writes to it and then reads it back, so it knows its own common practices.

With that in mind, storing values is easy. Say you want a 16bit integer stored in your 4bit/word RAM (so 4 words of data). Simply refer to addresses 0 through 4 as your variable and that's it. No "linking" necessary because you both know how to read from it and write to it, and you won't step on your own toes (in theory).

Additional thoughts for growing your construct: special locations for specialized registries (stack pointer to use a stack for recursive computing, program pointer for a turing machine etc). I had one more but I forgot it while writing that one, if I'll remember it I'll edit..

Upvotes: 2

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