It depends on 8051 mcu part number. Standard 8051 has 128 bytes of internal ram. As per Keil it is data segment. If you use mcu like P89V51RD2 AT 89C51RD2/ED2 then you can get XDATA memory. For this mcu you can choose Large memory model in C51 options of Keil. You can explicitly declare variable as XDATA. If you do so then compiler will place variable in XDATA instead of internal 128 data segment.