Thomas Alaimo

CISB 11 Online

Professor Zamora

Ch. 2 Assignment RAM

How Stuff Works

http://www.howstuffworks.com/ram.htm

Random Access Memory, or RAM, is the best-known form of computer memory. It is called random access because the data from any memory cell as long as the row and column that intersect at that cell are known. The opposite of RAM is SAM or Serial Access Memory, which can only be accessed sequentially; an example of this would be a cassette tape.

Webopedia

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/ram.html

There are two different types of RAM, DRAM, dynamic random access memory, and SRAM, Static Random Access Memory. The two types differ in the technology they use to store the data. DRAM is the most common type and needs to be refreshed thousands of times per second, SRAM does not need to be refreshed which makes it much faster. DRAM has access times of roughly 60 nanoseconds and SRAM has access times as low as 10 seconds. The expensive price of SRAM is what makes it less common than DRAM.

Kioskea

http://en.kioskea.net/contents/pc/ram.php3

RAM consists of thousands of small capacitors that store loads. When the capacitor is charged it is equal to 1 when it is empty it is equal to 0, so each capacitor represents one bit. These capacitors become discharged and must be recharged to maintain their value this is called refreshing. DRAM must be refreshed approximately once every 15 nanoseconds.