Random-access Memory - History

History

Early computers used relays, or delay lines for "main" memory functions. Ultrasonic delay lines could only reproduce data in the order it was written. Drum memory could be expanded at low cost but retrieval of non-sequential memory items required knowledge of the physical layout of the drum to optimize speed. Latches built out of vacuum tube triodes, and later, out of discrete transistors, were used for smaller and faster memories such as random-access register banks and registers. Such registers were relatively large, power-hungry and too costly to use for large amounts of data; generally only a few hundred or few thousand bits of such memory could be provided.

The first practical form of random-access memory was the Williams tube starting in 1947. 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.

Magnetic-core memory, invented in 1947 and developed up until the mid 1970s, became a widespread form of random-access memory. It relied on an array of magnetized rings; by changing the sense of magnetization, data could be stored, with each bit represented physically by one 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 memory system until displaced by solid-state memory in integrated circuits, starting in the early 1970s. Robert H. Dennard invented dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) in 1968; this allowed replacement of a 4 or 6-transistor latch circuit by a single transistor for each memory bit, greatly increasing memory density at the cost of volatility. Data was stored in the tiny capacitance of each transistor, and had to be periodically refreshed in a few milliseconds before the charge could leak away.

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.