This is a hardware-related problem...sorta

[mathrocks]

In my computer engineering class I was asked to find "How many memory chips are available and how many I need for a 256k x 8 and also what kind of decoder is needed" This is more of a digital logic question but there isnt another section on this forum for those types of questions.. Any help would be greatly appreciated. And if you know how to do it please explain how you got it...

[alexkerhead]

In my computer engineering class I was asked to find "How many memory chips are available and how many I need for a 256k x 8 and also what kind of decoder is needed" This is more of a digital logic question but there isnt another section on this forum for those types of questions.. Any help would be greatly appreciated. And if you know how to do it please explain how you got it...
What kind of Memory chips?

[mathrocks]

It doesn't say..in general. There's some formula for finding out I think but I'm not sure.

[alexkerhead]

maybe this might help...I am not sure tho, I never encountered anything like that, I just read what is written on the chip, I see no reason to know a formula to figure it out, but some schools look for stupid curriculum..
http://www.cemicro.com/We%20Buy%20and%20Sell.htm

[chroot]

Well, there are all kinds of different RAMs. In some situations, each RAM stores one bit of each byte, so you'd have eight RAM chips, each of which has 256k storage slots, each one bit wide.

Of course, you can buy single-chip RAMs that are 256k by 8, or even by 32, very cheaply.

Without more specification, the question does not have a unique answer. There are many ways to organize one or more RAMs to form a 256k by 8 array.

- Warren