Scribd
Upload
5 views

History of RAM

Uploaded by

Tesfaye
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
5 views

History of RAM

Uploaded by

Tesfaye
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

History

These IBM tabulating machines from the mid-1930s used


mechanical counters to store information.

Early computers used relays, mechanical counters[6] or delay lines for main memory functions.
Ultrasonic delay lines were serial devices which could only reproduce data in the order it was
written. Drum memory could be expanded at relatively low cost but efficient retrieval of memory
items requires knowledge of the physical layout of the drum to optimize speed. Latches built out
of triode vacuum tubes, and later, out of discrete transistors, were used for smaller and faster
memories such as registers. Such registers were relatively large and too costly to use for large
amounts of data; generally only a few dozen or few hundred bits of such memory could be
provided.

The first practical form of random-access memory was the Williams tube. It stored data as
electrically charged spots on the face of a cathode-ray tube. Since the electron beam of the CRT
could read and write the spots on the tube in any order, memory was random access. The
capacity of the Williams tube was a few hundred to around a thousand bits, but it was much
smaller, faster, and more power-efficient than using individual vacuum tube latches. Developed
at the University of Manchester in England, the Williams tube provided the medium on which
the first electronically stored program was implemented in the Manchester Baby computer,
which first successfully ran a program on 21 June, 1948.[7] In fact, rather than the Williams tube
memory being designed for the Baby, the Baby was a testbed to demonstrate the reliability of the
memory.[8][9]

Magnetic-core memory was invented in 1947 and developed up until the mid-1970s. It became a
widespread form of random-access memory, relying on an array of magnetized rings. By
changing the sense of each ring's magnetization, data could be stored with one bit stored per ring.
Since every ring had a combination of address wires to select and read or write it, access to any
memory location in any sequence was possible. Magnetic core memory was the standard form of
computer memory until displaced by semiconductor memory in integrated circuits (ICs) during
the early 1970s.[10]
Prior to the development of integrated read-only memory (ROM) circuits, permanent (or read-
only) random-access memory was often constructed using diode matrices driven by address
decoders, or specially wound core rope memory planes.[citation needed]

Semiconductor memory appeared in the 1960s with bipolar memory, which used bipolar
transistors. Although it was faster, it could not compete with the lower price of magnetic core
memory.[11]

You might also like