Atmega EEPROM, does each location = 1-byte?

In EEPROM of an atmega chip, does one address, or data saving location, consist of one byte of space? Even if the digital number 1 is saved in that location, will that location still take up one byte?
In other words, if a chip has 1k bytes of EEPROM, it will store 1000 items, whether the items are one byte long or even less?

Does the same go for external EEPROM chips, such as a 24LC512, which has room for 512k bytes?

What happens when EEPROM is full? Will a message be sent out?

Thank you
PO'T

Your microcontroller is specified in bytes. The 24lc512 is a 64kbyte device.

Your software has to handle available space remaining.

blueroomelectronics said:

Your microcontroller is specified in bytes. The 24lc512 is a 64kbyte device.

Your software has to handle available space remaining.

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Thanks, but that was only a statement that I made about the 24lc512, which was probably not accurate and not an issue.

My original question was: does one address, or data saving location, consist of one byte of space? on any chip that contains EEPROM.
That is what my concern is.

No, it does not.

dknguyen said:

No, it does not.

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Oh.

Thank you, thank you very much. I think.

pwotoole said:

Oh.

Thank you, thank you very much. I think.

Click to expand...

I would disagree, almost always it does - data is 'generally' saved in bytes, and takes one full memory location.

There are exceptions, 16 bit processors often have the option of treating a memory location as either two 8 bit bytes, or one 16 bit word.

PIC's are a little different, because of their unique Harvard architecture, program memory is all words (of varying lengths), and GPR's (RAM) are all 8 bit bytes.

As already mentioned, if you want to pack smaller quantities of data as bytes, you can use software to store them more economically - for example store 4 bit nibbles in pairs, taking a single byte for two nibbles.

Thank you, Nigel.
That is what I wanted to know. I appreciate your clarification.

Patrick

I've seen two versions of the same EEPROM (or was it flash memories? either way) that have a data bus width of 8 bits with twice as many addresses and 16 bits with half as many addresses.

dknguyen said:

I've seen two versions of the same EEPROM (or was it flash memories? either way) that have a data bus width of 8 bits with twice as many addresses and 16 bits with half as many addresses.

Click to expand...

Read the section of my post about 16 bit processors.