Types of RAM and the differences between them
Random Access Memory ( RAM) is a basic and very important part of your computer . There is no smart device that does not have a certain capacity of RAM inside it, whether it is a phone, computer, smart watch, or even a refrigerator or smart air conditioner. All of these devices have RAM inside them. So, what does RAM mean? What are its types? How does it work? We answer all these questions in this article.
What is RAM?
RAM is a type of storage memory inside the device, characterized by a very high reading and writing speed, this speed is measured in MHz megahertz, for example, RAM with a speed of 3200MHz has a reading and writing speed of 25600MB/s, RAM is a temporary memory that stores everything you open on it so that the processor can work on it as quickly as possible, once you close a program, all its data is deleted from the RAM, this term is fixed whether we are talking about the RAM of a computer, a mobile phone, or any other smart device.
How does RAM work?
RAM, like any SSD storage unit, is a Memory Block, or rather a group of transistors on which data is stored - with many differences, of course - ignoring the location of the data. It is not like the HDD, whose speed is affected by the location of the data on the storage disk, which makes the memory much faster, as we said above, exceeding 25 thousand megabytes per second, but all storage is temporary. Once the electricity is cut off from the random memory or you close an application, everything stored on it is erased immediately.
Types of RAM
- dynamic random access memory (DRAM)
- Static Random Access Memory (SRAM)
- LPDDR small power memories
dynamic memory dram
It is the cheapest type and the type that is widespread among ordinary consumers due to its cheap price and its more than sufficient performance for the various functions that we need on a daily basis in the best possible way. This is due to its basic composition, which is a group of capacitors that are connected together to form a storage unit. Each cell may or may not contain a charge. These capacitors store data in the form of an electrical charge, but in general, capacitors, due to their physical nature, lose the charge stored inside them, so they are connected to an electrical circuit that refreshes them every period with a transistor that acts as a guard and regulator for the operations that take place on the RAM.
SRAM
A type of memory that requires continuous electricity, but does not need an electrical circuit to refresh the data. The memory here consists of a group of transistors like any computer, carrying the values 0 and 1 to indicate the presence of data or not. Because of the high price of this memory and the fact that it is much faster than dynamic memory, it is used as cache memory inside the processor only.
LPDDR Low Power Memory
It is the memory used inside smartphones and devices that operate with ARM architecture processors. It is designed to consume a low percentage of energy, making it more suitable for mobile phones. It is of the dynamic category and is designed in the form of a rectangle or a small square surrounded by a set of pins on its edges that connect to the motherboard. You can say that its design is very similar to the design of a regular processor.
Speed difference between RAM and processor
One of the historical facts that you would like to know about random access memory is the difference between its speed and the processor speed. For a long period of time, the processor was slower than it is now, which was a problem in synchronizing the RAM speed with the processor speed. Dynamic memory was the most widely used until we reached the year 2000 when processor speeds increased, so RAM had to be developed to match the processor speed, which led to the discovery of what is known as DDR.
DDR or Double Data Rate is the latest RAM technology now and is used to double the memory's data transfer and reading rate whether on computers , Android devices or iPhones, doubling it twice, and DDR has been developed 3 times, we have DDR2, DDR3, DDR4 and DDR5 now, and due to the vast differences between each generation and the other, they are not compatible with each other at all.
The effect of RAM on the graphics card
The effect of RAM on the graphics card lies in the vRAM , as there is RAM for the processor and to help the processor, there is RAM for the graphics card called GDDR SDRAM or Graphics Double Data Rate SDRAM, which is used in everything related to graphics and rendering to transfer data to the graphics card and work on it in a faster time. Of course, it consumes high electrical energy and because of its technology, it accomplishes the same tasks in a shorter time than regular RAM because it works in parallel, which allows the RAM to work on more than one process at the same time, like regular DDR. This RAM has been developed until it reached GDDR6
What happens when the RAM is fully occupied?
If you have a warehouse and there are a lot of goods that filled the warehouse, and you want to put more goods, what will you do? The simplest answer is that you will use a transport vehicle to temporarily store the excess goods until you empty the warehouse and find a place for the excess goods. This is what happens in the computer when the RAM is full, the computer resorts to what is called Virtual RAM or virtual memory, which is part of your storage memory that the system uses to temporarily store lower priority tasks, until the RAM finishes filling it and empties a little to take on these tasks. Of course, any tasks stored in the storage memory take longer to process due to the slowness of the storage memory compared to RAM
The future of RAM
The world is now moving towards a new type of memory, which is called anti-RAM, a new type of random access memory that is being developed to increase the speed of reading and writing data, so that programs on any device can work better, but unlike regular RAM, the data stored on this memory will not be erased when the device is turned off, and it will not consume high electrical power as well, so it will be more suitable for smartphones such as Android and iPhone and devices that rely on processors with ARM architecture, but all of these are speculations. We do not know whether they will happen soon or not. We follow the news to convey it to you