ABSTRACT
Storage technology ‘‘takes the center stage’’ [1] in more and more systems because of the eternal push for more complex applications with especially larger and more complicated data types. In addition, the access speed, size, and power consumption associated with this storage form a severe bottleneck in these systems (especially in an embedded context). In this chapter, several building blocks for memory storage will be investigated, with the emphasis on internal architectural organization. After a general classification of the memory hierarchy components in Section 2, cache architecture issues will be treated in Section 3, followed by main memory organization aspects in Section 4. The main emphasis will lie on modern multimedia and telecom oriented processors, both of the microprocessor and DSP type.
