Mäluaadressid

Mäluaadressid, often translated as memory addresses, are numerical labels assigned to individual memory cells within a computer's memory. These addresses serve as unique identifiers, allowing the processor to locate and access specific data or instructions stored in RAM. Think of it like a street address for each house in a city; the address tells you exactly where to find a particular house.

When a program needs to retrieve data, it sends the corresponding memory address to the memory controller. The controller then translates this address into the physical location of the data in the memory chips and fetches it. Similarly, when data needs to be written to memory, the processor specifies the target memory address, and the data is stored at that location.

Memory addresses are typically represented in hexadecimal format, which is a base-16 numbering system. This is because hexadecimal numbers are more compact and easier for humans to read than their binary (base-2) equivalents, while still being directly translatable to binary, which is the language computers understand. The total range of possible memory addresses determines the maximum amount of memory a system can utilize. This range is often dictated by the architecture of the processor, such as whether it's a 32-bit or 64-bit system. Higher bit counts allow for a much larger address space, enabling systems to access significantly more RAM.