Dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) is a type of random-access memory that stores each bit of data in a separate capacitor within an integrated circuit. The capacitor can be either charged or discharged; these two states are taken to represent the two values of a bit, conventionally called 0 and 1. Since capacitors leak charge, the information eventually fades unless the capacitor charge is refreshed periodically. Because of this refresh requirement, it is a dynamic memory as opposed to SRAM and other static memory.
The main memory (the "RAM") in personal computers is dynamic RAM (DRAM). It is the RAM in laptop and workstation computers as well as some of the RAM of video game consoles.
The advantage of DRAM is its structural simplicity: only one transistor and a capacitor are required per bit, compared to four or six transistors in SRAM. This allows DRAM to reach very high densities. Unlike flash memory, DRAM is volatile memory (cf. non-volatile memory), since it loses its data quickly when power is removed. The transistors and capacitors used are extremely small; billions can fit on a single memory chip.
Read more about Dynamic Random-access Memory: History, Operation Principle, Error Detection and Correction, Packaging, Versions, Security
Famous quotes containing the words dynamic and/or memory:
“Imagination is always the fabric of social life and the dynamic of history. The influence of real needs and compulsions, of real interests and materials, is indirect because the crowd is never conscious of it.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)
“Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the fraught bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)