brief look at memory technology

http://www.escotal.com/memory.html

This link will aid in understanding the history of memory technology

The purpose of buying a DDR memory for you PC

Most consumers are familiar with the word ‘memory’ in the computer market as a hardware component that helps to determine a computer’s speed. There are some consumers who have the understanding that a DDR memory, purchase at our local computer and electronic store work hand in hand with the processor for the computer performance. Still the actual roll that the memory plays is still a question for some despite their knowledge of the amount of megabytes it holds.

The basic understanding that should be known is that a DDR memory forms the CPU (Central Processing Unit) work area. We should then have to first recognize that the function of the CPU is only to analyze, calculate and process the things your software ask it to do. For the processor to run your program efficiently and as quickly as possible, it needs to be able gather and organize the needed information (Data) about the program in easily access location.

The gathering area is the memory cells of your DDR memory module. When you double-click on a program icon to run (open) a program, the CPU goes about gathering as much information about the program. This allow the CPU to randomly (quickly) access and process those information without much delay and for immediate use.

One could think that a hard-drive would better suit, because they have a lot of gigabyte of storage than a 512MB DDR memory module. In fact the first installation of software or the adding of files on your computer is sent to your hard drive. While this is so there are many technical reasons why hard-drives are not used in the capacity of the memory modules.

One reason is that a hard drive main purpose is to store information, files, and software for long term usage. On the other hand, data on memory will only last once the computer is remains turned-on. Another reason is that a hard drive delivers data to the CPU much slower than your memory module.

Provided as a working area to organize and gather information before and after processing. We then recognize that the CPU cannot do without the use of memory. This lets us understand why a computer would refuse to start if there is no good memory module in your computer. Equaling to this, a computer can function with only its CPU and memory module attached to a power supplied motherboard.

Understanding the roll of the memory module in our computers would make it much easier for us to understand what PC533; 512MB does for your computer. 512MB is the maximum amount of Data (information) it can gather at any one time for the CPU.

PC533 is a code classification for the data transfer speed of the memory module which is 400MHz (cycle time). The speed of the memory does influence the CPU efficiency. Random Access Memory (RAM) is the first place the CPU looks to find data to process. For a DDR memory module running at 333MHz with a 2,000MHz (2GHz) CPU there would be a delayed time in getting information between memory and CPU of 667MHz. In contrast a DDR memory module running at 400MHz with the same CPU speed. The delayed time would be 67MHz less. This allows for a faster and more efficient performance of your computer software. The delay time is seen as latency.

Explaining the fundamental function of our memory modules, we cannot ignore that there are more to memory and the term memory. There are distinctions of memory technology which starts from ROM (Read Only Memory) and RAM (Random Access Memory) which are then broken down further. The two sub-category of RAM are Static RAM and Dynamic RAM. SRAM memory technology is associated with the term L2 cache found bundled with our processors. DRAM is the type of memory we get at our local computer and electronic store in the form of DDR-DRAM: PC533/512MB.

SDRAM and DRAM both play a fundamental roll in creating the work area for the CPU but the DDR memory we buy are consider the main memory.