Introduce Multiplexed Addressing as the Fix

# Introduce Multiplexed Addressing as the Fix

The fix that defined this generation was to stop giving every address bit its own permanent pin and instead share the same physical pins across two separate time phases.

The row portion of the address was sent first, over a shared set of address pins, and latched inside the chip. The column portion of the address was then sent second, over the same physical pins, and latched separately.

This single change, multiplexed addressing, let the package pin count grow only with the square root of the array size rather than linearly with the full address width, and it became the defining engineering step of the 4K generation.

MULTIPLEXED ADDRESSINGBeforeseparate pins for every row and column address bitAfterone shared pin bus, used twice per access cycleResulthalf the address pins for the same addressable space

Diagram above: multiplexed addressing.

WHY THIS GENERATION, NOT EARLIER1K scalepin count was still tolerable without multiplexing4K scalepin count crossed the threshold where sharing paid offLegacythis scheme carried forward into every DRAM generation that followed

Diagram above: why this generation, not earlier.

Take introduce multiplexed addressing as the fix further

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