on November 25, 2024
Digital is on everyone’s lips these days. Its universality (and its name!) comes from the coding of all types of information, including programmes, in the form of numbers. These numbers are represented in the form of sequences of ‘bits’ (binary digits that can take the values 0 or 1). So any hardware technology that has 2 states can be used to store any type of information. Beyond simply storing information, to be useful, a memory technology must support a number of operations, including reading, writing, modifying, searching or even erasing the information it contains. Depending on the role assigned to a memory, it may or may not be modifiable or volatile (a volatile memory loses the information it contains when its power supply is cut off). There are 2 main categories of computer memory: working memory, also known as random access memory, in which the programmes being run and the data being used are manipulated. This type of memory must be modifiable, and may or may not be volatile; storage memory, also known as mass memory, which is used for long-term storage of information. Such memory may or may not be modifiable, but must be non-volatile. In the remainder of this article, we will review the main computer memory hardware technologies, then the role of software in the memory function, and finish by presenting 4 developments that we can anticipate in the short to medium term.
Article by Pierre Boulet in ALEA Association L’Esprit d’Archimède
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