Different Memory Models

[myk45]

Hello Everyone.

Well, i have really little experience in assembly. So, please excuse me if my question is very trivial.

Well, i attended a course on programming the 8086 and we used the MASM assembler, and programming which, we always used this:

.model small

i never understood exactly why we used to use the small model. So i googled a little and i found that there were many memory models like:

Flat memory model
Segmented memory model
Paged memory model

Now im totally confused as to what a memory model is, and im facing an information overload as im jumping from one link to the other!

Can anyone please give me a link ar suggest a book perhaps where i can learn clearly as to what a memory model is, and what are the different types?

Thanks.