Internal RAM
Encyclopedia
Internal RAM, or IRAM, is the address range
of RAM
that is internal to the CPU. Some object file
s contain an .iram section.
Generally, IRAM is composed of very high speed SRAM located alongside of the CPU. It acts similar to a cache
, but is software addressable. This saves transistors and power, and is potentially much faster, but forces programmers to specifically allocate it in order to benefit. In contrast, cache is invisible to the programmer.
Memory address
A digital computer's memory, more specifically main memory, consists of many memory locations, each having a memory address, a number, analogous to a street address, at which computer programs store and retrieve, machine code or data. Most application programs do not directly read and write to...
of RAM
Ram
-Animals:*Ram, an uncastrated male sheep*Ram cichlid, a species of freshwater fish endemic to Colombia and Venezuela-Military:*Battering ram*Ramming, a military tactic in which one vehicle runs into another...
that is internal to the CPU. Some object file
Object file
An object file is a file containing relocatable format machine code that is usually not directly executable. Object files are produced by an assembler, compiler, or other language translator, and used as input to the linker....
s contain an .iram section.
Generally, IRAM is composed of very high speed SRAM located alongside of the CPU. It acts similar to a cache
Cache
In computer engineering, a cache is a component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere...
, but is software addressable. This saves transistors and power, and is potentially much faster, but forces programmers to specifically allocate it in order to benefit. In contrast, cache is invisible to the programmer.