8. Memory Paragraphs in Real Mode

• Any memory address evenly divisible by 16 is called a paragraph boundary.

  • The first paragraph boundary is address 0.

  • The second is address 10H (10H is equal to decimal 16.)

  • The third address is 20H, and so on.

• Any paragraph boundary may be considered the start of a segment.

• There are 64K different paragraph boundaries where a segment may begin.

• Each paragraph boundary has a number.

• The numbers range from 0 to 64K minus one (decimal 65,535 or hex 0FFFFh.)

• Any segment may begin at any paragraph boundary.

• The number of the paragraph boundary is called the segment address.

• Assembly language program can have up to four or five segments.

• Segment address is 16 bytes in size.