The 8086 architecture uses the concept of segmented memory. 8086 able to address to address a memory capacity of 1 megabyte and it is byte organized. This 1 megabyte memory is divided into 16 logical segments. Each segment contains 64 kbytes of memory.
There are four segment register in 8086
- Code Segment register (CS)
- Data Segment register (DS)
- Extra Segment register (ES)
- Stack Segment register (SS)
Code Segment Register (CS): is used for addressing memory location in the code segment of the memory, where the executable program is stored.
Data Segment Register (DS): points to the data segment of the memory where the data is stored.
Extra Segment Register (ES) : also refers to a segment in the memory which is another data segment in the memory.