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What does Upper Memory Area mean
The Upper Memory Area (UMA) is a feature of the design of IBM PC-compatible x86 computers. It is the feature that creates the 640k barrier. IBM reserved the uppermost region of the PC memory map for ROM, RAM on peripherals and memory-mapped input/output (I/O). This region is called the UMA and lies above Conventional memory, between 640 kB and the 1 MB maximum addressable limit of the original PC's 8088 CPU. For example, the monochrome video memory area runs from &B000 to &B7FF. However, even with video RAM, the ROM BIOS and I/O ports for expansion cards, much of this 384 kB of address space was unused - even when a 64 kB window was reserved for the Expanded Memory Specification "frame" address into which EMS RAM was bank-switched. For example, on most PCs, all or most of the area from &C800 to &EFFF is normally unused. ![]()
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