Week 5: Muddy Memory

In week five the greatest difficulty that I ran into was trying to differentiate among the different types of memory. This is my best understanding of computer memory. First of all, let me define computer memory on a broad spectrum: computer memory is usually a group of chips installed on a small circuit board that stores data to be used at a later point in time. Now that we know what computer memory is and what it does we can differentiate the many types of computer memory into two basic categories: volatile and non-volatile.

Volatile memory stores all of the frequently used data and instructions, but its content will be erased once the computer is turned off. The most basic form of volatile memory is called Random Access Memory (RAM). With time came innovation and the creation of many types of RAM: Static RAM, Dynamic RAM (DRAM), Synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), Double Data Rate SDRAM (DDR SDRAM), DDR2 SDRAM, Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM, DDR3 SDRAM, and RAMBUS. To my understanding the most widely used type of RAM is DDR3 SDRAM and DD2 SDRAM because they are affordable yet fast.

Non-volatile memory is much slower than volatile memory, but it does not lose its content when the computer is turned off. Types of non-volatile memory are Read Only Memory (ROM), and Flash Memory. Most types of ROM have data that is written into it at production and this data cannot be changed in any way. To my understanding EEPROM came along before the creation of Flash Memory and it was the first rewritable non-volatile memory.