What is the name of a device’s memory location?

During the installation of a new piece of hardware, you notice that it has been assigned a hexadecimal memory location by the operating system. What is the name of this memory location?

A) I/O Address

B) IRQ

C) DMA

D) PCI

The answer: A) I/O Address

The Input/Output address is the hexadecimal-based memory location for the hardware components in a computer. In Windows, you can find the I/O address in the Device Manager under the hardware properties for the device.

The incorrect answers:

B) IRQ
An Interrupt ReQuest is used by hardware components to get the “ear” of the CPU. By sending an interrupt request, a piece of hardware can get the attention of the CPU so that tasks can be performed.

C) DMA
Direct Memory Access is a method where hardware devices can talk directly to memory instead of using the CPU. It speeds the transfer of information, but the hardware must be specifically designed to take advantage of DMA.

D) PCI
The Peripheral Component Interconnect bus is a computer bus for transferring information, not a memory location name.

Want to know more? Watch “System Resources: I/O, IRQ, and DMA.” If you’ve ever looked into the details of the Windows Device Manager, then you’ve probably seen references to I/O addresses, IRQ values, and DMA settings. In this video, we’ll explain what all of these abbreviations mean and show you how the Windows Device Manager can be used to view and modify the system resources in your personal computer..