dual ported

dual ported

A term used to describe memory integrated circuits which canbe accessed simultaneously via two independent address anddata busses.

Dual ported memory is often used in video display hardware,especially in conjunction with Video Random Access Memory(VRAM). The two ports allow the video display hardware toread memory to display the contents on screen at the same timeas the CPU writes data to other areas of the same memory. Insingle-ported memory these two processes cannot occursimultanteously, the CPU must wait, thus resulting in sloweraccess times. Cycle stealing is one technique used to avoidthis in single-ported video memory.