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Bank switching

Not to be confused with Paging.

A hypothetical memory map of bank-switched memory for a processor that can only address 64 KB. This scheme shows 200 KB of memory, of which only 64 KB can be accessed at any time by the processor. The operating system must manage the bank-switching operation to ensure that program execution can continue when part of memory is not accessible to the processor.

Bank switching is a technique used in computer design to increase the amount of usable memory beyond the amount directly addressable by the processor[1] instructions. It can be used to configure a system differently at different times; for example, a ROM required to start a system from diskette could be switched out when no longer needed. In video game systems, bank switching allowed larger games to be developed for play on existing consoles.

Bank switching originated in minicomputer systems.[2] Many modern microcontrollers and microprocessors use bank switching to manage random-access memory, non-volatile memory, input-output devices and system management registers in small embedded systems. The technique was common in 8-bit microcomputer systems. Bank-switching may also be used to work around limitations in address bus width, where some hardware constraint prevents straightforward addition of more address lines, and to work around limitations in the ISA, where the addresses generated are narrower than the address bus width. Some control-oriented microprocessors use a bank-switching technique to access internal I/O and control registers, which limits the number of register address bits that must be used in every instruction.

Unlike memory management by paging, data is not exchanged with a mass storage device like disk storage. Data remains in quiescent storage in a memory area that is not currently accessible to the processor (although it may be accessible to the video display, DMA controller, or other subsystems of the computer) without the use of special prefix instructions.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Aspinall_1978 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Bell_1971 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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