Intel 80C188XL - Manual (Page 37)

OVERVIEW OF THE 80C186 FAMILY ARCHITECTURE
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2.1.7 Memory Segmentation
Programs for the 80C186 Modular Core family view the 1 Mbyte memory space as a group of
user-defined segments. A segment is a logical unit of memory that can be up to 64 Kbytes long.
Each segment is composed of contiguous memory locations. Segments are independent and sep-
arately addressable. Software assigns every segment a base address (starting location) in memory
space. All segments begin on 16-byte memory boundaries. There are no other restrictions on seg-
ment locations. Segments can be adjacent, disjoint, partially overlapped or fully overlapped (see
Figure 2-6). A physical memory location can be mapped into (covered by) one or more logical
segments.