About RAM

My good mate Oliver Kelly relatedtotech.blogspot.com, who is a young geek sucking up all there is that we have in our geek world is hungry for information about RAM.

Well here is a bit about it that I'm sure he will find useful:

RAM stands for Random Access Memory. Simply because a processor in a PC may access any part of it at any time. Unlike in the old days of tape used for storage (old days for non backup use that is, tape is still the best there). Tape had to be wound to the correct position to load or save the data, not random access!

The best type of ram you can get is Static RAM.  This RAM uses a type of chip that has the fastest access speed.  Yes, RAM has a speed.  The processor must wait for the RAM to deliver the goods.  Static RAM, or SRAM is so bloody expensive that you will not have much in your PC, if any.  I mean a few years ago I could buy a 8KB, Yes 8 Kilo Byte SRAM chip for £3. A gigabyte of the stuff? If I was a government, perhaps lol

So modern PC's tend to use Dynamic RAM, or DRAM. This RAM is much cheaper to make. But it has a downside, its much much slower than SRAM. 

This is because DRAM is forgetfull.  The data that is stored in it must be automoatically refreshed several times a second, this slows down the access time.

However, DRAM has gotten much faster than its original version.  We call modern DRAM memory DDR.

DDR stands for Double Data Rate.  To try and speed up DRAM, designers came up with the idea that they could speed it up by letting the processor take or store twice as many bits at the same time as before. So if you were storing 16 bits at a time before, now the memory controller would let you store 32 at a time. So they Doubled the Data Rate :-D

DDR was replaced with DDR2, which increased the speed even more by running faster than DDR and along with a few other changes allowed the processor to store 64bits at a time! Doubling the data rate a second time.

Now my PC is using DDR3 :-D which is the latest version, soon to be replaced with DDR4. DDR2 and DDR3 are common in shops, DDR not so.

Memory prices change every day due to many things including how many the manufacturer decided to make at that time.  I remember one time  DDR2 was very cheap.  Then it more than doubled in price in a week! A 1GB stick of DDR2 RAM went from £25 to £50 or higher.

If you have an old PC that uses DDR and you wish to upgrade, best do so when DDR2 or DDR3 is nice and cheap!

There used to be the idea that adding more RAM speeds up the PC.  That used to be the case for something like an Amiga, where more RAM really made a massive difference, but modern PC's have so much that most of it goes unused.

It is true that with too little RAM your PC will be running very slow. Adding more ram will speed it up, but only to a point. Having loads of ram is good for letting you handle loads of data and applications at the same time.

Hopfully Oliver Kelly got something out of that.  There is a lot more to it but I dont know all of it myself lol


As a sort of mini interview I asked Oliver what he thought about cheap android tablets, you know the ones from china. We both got one each and have been using them for a while now:

Too be honest. Very very inspressed. The way they take the materials and build them then create amazing rom's and its so cheap and there quite good but the free apps are quite on the downside whats your opinion?

and so I answered:

Well the hardware is quite good. Mine runs at 1ghz, as fast as the my android phone.

They fall down with bad and cheap batteries. Also the original rom may not be the best for tablet use.

I did find a guide that shows how to open my tablet and change the battery.  I may give it a go.



Take a look at Olivers blog: relatedtotech.blogspot.com