What is the difference between extended and expanded memory?

Extended memory

Memory addresses greater than or equal to one megabyte are called extended memory. The 8088 and 8086 PCs can't have extended memory because these chips can access only addresses of less than one megabyte (1MB) in size.

With the minor exception of the High Memory Area (HMA), extended memory can be addressed only by applications run in real mode. It is possible, however, for DOS applications to make use of this memory to store data (but not to execute code directly from there). XMS (eXtended Memory Standard, promulgated by Microsoft) permits applications to allocate extended memory and takes care of copying data to and from extended memory and conventional memory so that the application does not have to worry about switching between modes. Like EMS, XMS usually requires loading a device driver of some sort. Extended memory is limited to 15Mb on 286es and 386SXes (15Mb extended plus 1Mb conventional and upper memory equals 16Mb, or 224, 24 being the number of address lines coming out of the CPU), limited to 4 gigabytes (232) for 386DX chips and up, although very few motherboards have been designed to hold that much memory.

Expanded memory

Expanded memory is addressed from within the lower 1MB space, usually above 640K. It is sometimes up to 64K of real addresses but this is just a small portion of the whole expanded memory, which can be very large. The expanded memory requires hardware and/or software that maps the expanded memory to a piece of address space, in what is called a "page frame". Extended memory can be used as expanded memory by using software and the 80286 or 80386 chips to "remap" it to the lower 1MB. It should be noted that the 80386 chip has hardware built in that supports expanded memory while the 80286 chip does not. Software that will convert extended memory on an 80286 machine to expanded memory may result in a significant performance penalty, if the machine does not have special hardware support for expanded memory. Software that will convert extended memory to expanded memory on an 80286 machine is not written to use the special hardware built into the 80386 chip, so the same type of performance penalty may apply.

Hardware supported expanded memory is the fastest form of expanded memory and is available directly on all 80386SX or better IBM compatibles running the proper software. It is also available on some 80286 machines with special chip sets or 80286 machines equipped with a hardware memory manager add-on. Lastly, it is available in a large number of memory expansion boards for all IBM compatible machines, including the 8088/8086 machines.

Expanded Memory

Extended Memory

Extended memory

Memory addresses greater than or equal to one megabyte are called extended memory. The 8088 and 8086 PCs can't have extended memory because these chips can access only addresses of less than one megabyte (1MB) in size.

With the minor exception of the High Memory Area (HMA), extended memory can be addressed only by applications run in real mode. It is possible, however, for DOS applications to make use of this memory to store data (but not to execute code directly from there). XMS (eXtended Memory Standard, promulgated by Microsoft) permits applications to allocate extended memory and takes care of copying data to and from extended memory and conventional memory so that the application does not have to worry about switching between modes. Like EMS, XMS usually requires loading a device driver of some sort. Extended memory is limited to 15Mb on 286es and 386SXes (15Mb extended plus 1Mb conventional and upper memory equals 16Mb, or 224, 24 being the number of address lines coming out of the CPU), limited to 4 gigabytes (232) for 386DX chips and up, although very few motherboards have been designed to hold that much memory.

Expanded memory

Expanded memory is addressed from within the lower 1MB space, usually above 640K. It is sometimes up to 64K of real addresses but this is just a small portion of the whole expanded memory, which can be very large. The expanded memory requires hardware and/or software that maps the expanded memory to a piece of address space, in what is called a "page frame". Extended memory can be used as expanded memory by using software and the 80286 or 80386 chips to "remap" it to the lower 1MB. It should be noted that the 80386 chip has hardware built in that supports expanded memory while the 80286 chip does not. Software that will convert extended memory on an 80286 machine to expanded memory may result in a significant performance penalty, if the machine does not have special hardware support for expanded memory. Software that will convert extended memory to expanded memory on an 80286 machine is not written to use the special hardware built into the 80386 chip, so the same type of performance penalty may apply.

Hardware supported expanded memory is the fastest form of expanded memory and is available directly on all 80386SX or better IBM compatibles running the proper software. It is also available on some 80286 machines with special chip sets or 80286 machines equipped with a hardware memory manager add-on. Lastly, it is available in a large number of memory expansion boards for all IBM compatible machines, including the 8088/8086 machines.

This Site Might Help You.

RE:

What is the difference between extended and expanded memory?

Ancient. Today's hardware just has "RAM."