Overview
DMA allows devices like network cards, storage controllers, and sound cards to transfer data directly to and from RAM without burdening the CPU with every byte of the transfer.
Benefit
Significantly improves system performance by allowing the CPU to perform other tasks while large data transfers are happening in the background.
Mechanism
The CPU initiates the transfer by telling the DMA controller the source, destination, and amount of data, and then the DMA controller takes over the bus to perform the transfer.