Computer Hardware Terms, Glossary and Dictionary

In computer science, a memory address is a unique identifier for a memory location at which a CPU or other device can store a piece of data for later retrieval. In modern byte-addressable computers, each address identifies a single byte of storage; data too large to be stored in a single byte may reside in multiple bytes occupying a sequence of consecutive addresses. CPU uses the memory address to track where data and instructions are stored in RAM and CPU uses the address bus to communicate which memory address it wants to access, and the memory controller reads the address and then puts the data stored in that memory address back onto the address bus for the CPU to use.

Related Terms

memory address