What Are the Functions of Memory Chips?
Memory chips are an integrated circuit placed on a printed circuit board (PCB). The common name for this arrangement is Random Access Memory or RAM. RAM is a basic system component used in the storage and transfer of data throughout a computer system.
Other People Are Reading
-
History
-
The first generation of RAM was not chips at all, but rather ferrite rings used to store data by changing their polarity to represent a zero or a 1 as data. RAM was not packaged as memory chips until the advent of the integrated circuit.
Function
-
Memory chips act as a matrix of switches that store the state of one bit as voltage. These states are a representation of the data currently being stored in RAM. These memory chips transfer to and from the the different devices connected to a computer system.
-
Size
-
Memory chips individually range in capacity from 1 MB to 128MB in modern memory solutions. Several of these memory chips are aligned in a row on a horizontally wide PCB called a RAM chip when used in a computer system.
Benefits
-
Memory chips provide a fast access area between the hard drives and CPU of a computer where data can be stored during processing without incurring the performance penalties of slower mechanical hard drives.
Warning
-
Memory chips store data as a matrix of electricity, and, because of this, they are considered volatile memory. Volatile memory will not persist after a power failure or system shutdown.
-
