What is DMA (direct memory access)?
A mechanism that transfers data directly between peripherals and memory without going through the CPU, so the CPU can do other work during large transfers.
Field: CPUs and architecture
DMA (direct memory access) in the explanations
With DMA, a dedicated controller moves data between memory and peripherals, so the CPU only starts the transfer and receives a completion interrupt, remaining free in between.
Which mechanism transfers data directly between peripherals…Main memory and cache temporarily disagree, however, so coherence and consistency with DMA must be managed.
Which correctly describes the write-back policy for caches?
Questions that mention DMA (direct memory access) (2)
Related terms
Interrupt Amdahl's law Branch prediction Cache coherency Cache memory DVFS (dynamic voltage and frequency scaling) GPU Instruction set architecture (ISA) IPC Microcontroller