In another SDMB thread someone computer “RAM” which made me think they sounded a bit out of date. Is this just me?
It seemed like back in the 90’s computer memory was frequently called “RAM” for random access memory.
However, I almost never hear that now. If you go to Amazon or Newegg or any other place that sells computer memory, they just call it “memory.” No RAM that I can find.
Is “RAM” dead?
Does anyone care about ROM?
Although you’re right in that I usually just see it called “memory” these days. Sometimes I say RAM when just listing stats (“3.6GHz i5 processor, 12GB RAM, 2TB hard drive…”) but usually I’d say “I’d recommend you get at least 4GB memory…”
the package is what is talked about because there are so many types now.
there used to be a lot more use of ROM way back in the day, so the use of the term “RAM” was useful to keep them distinct.
nowadays there’s maybe a relatively tiny bit of ROM in most PCs/devices which holds the system boot firmware, and that’s about it.
The important distinction has always been between it (whether referred to as ‘RAM’ or as ‘memory’ or as ‘system memory’) and storage space (‘hard drive’ ‘disk space’ ‘drive space’ etc).
I basically only see people use RAM when space is at a premium - if you’re listing out a whole bunch of system specs, you’ll see “8G RAM” or something mashed in there, but oddly, everyone seems to type out “memory” the rest of the time.
I wonder if the rise of flash memory and SSDs as storage has anything to do with it.
RAM stands for Random Access Memory, which was synonymous with memory, and distinct from storage when your storage space was a spinning disk or tape, which is sequential access.
Now that we’re using flash for storage as well, it makes more sense to differentiate between memory (volatile, used for working code/data) and storage (non-volatile, used for long-term data storage), and the term RAM is not as effective a distinction.
No, it’s still a pretty good McCartney album.
What about ROM?
That’s an interesting point. I recently took on some part time development work, and the company provided me with a hopelessly underpowered laptop. “It only has 2 Gb RAM,” I complained. I wonder if I dated myself?
The specs on the new laptop they’ve ordered for me simply call it “Memory”. Also, instead of hard drive, they say “Primary Storage”, because actually it’s solid state memory, not a hard drive. That’s becoming more common too.
To be honest, I find that both terms are useful.
The fundamental limiting factor in whether a computer can actually perform/finish a given task is whether or not there is enough memory. It doesn’t matter the actual architecture of that memory so much as that there is enough bits of it. Run out of memory, and it isn’t possible for the computer to finish the task. Modern OSes have a way to use hard disk space as a stopgap measure but it causes catastrophic loss of performance.
This is what ultimately limits the usefulness of old computers. Slower processors and other hardware suck, but as long as the memory is there, you can do most of the same tasks.
Similarly, when you are architecting software, you frequently can trade off memory usage for performance. (you can choose an algorithm that eats more memory but processes faster, or vice versa)
Anyways, I was recently writing firmware for an embedded system. The chip has 64k of onboard flash for code, but only 4k of actual RAM. This meant I had to be very strict in how I structured the code to minimize RAM usage, but I could inline functions and do other things that increased the code size without worry.
You’re talking about virtual memory, and I wouldn’t call that a stopgap. It’s what allows having many applications open at once. One that’s swapped (or partly swapped) into virtual memory is going to be slightly sluggish when you first switch back to it, but really not that bad. If you are actively using applications that exceed physical memory, then, yes, it gets catastrophic. The hard drive is constantly swapping segments of memory to and from the hard drive. We used to call that thrashing, but who knows? Maybe that term is as dated now as RAM and floppy disk.
RAM? Oh, you mean “core memory.” 
… Or at least that’s what us oldtimers called it for a decade or so even after the switch to monolithic main memory was general.
I was there the first time IBM’s mainframe operating system DOS/VS encountered 8 Megabytes of main memory – the O.S. needed to be patched since the bit for 8 Meg was treated as a sign-bit. (That’s 8 Megabytes, with an M.)
I once programmed a controller with ZERO dedicated memory (outside of 32 bytes of registers). This presented trouble only for the “Chinese remainder” algorithm used for one of the supported error-correction codes, but the 128-byte data Fifo was available and adequate for that purpose.
My manager once apologized when asking me to develop requisite OS and assembler for an eclectically-kluged minicomputer with 64k of core. “I realize that’s a ridiculously large amount of memory; don’t feel you need to use it all!”
Thrashing can still happen - you just have to work harder to do it.
I’m not sure what was meant by “older” computers. I learned about virtual memory and memory hierarchy in grad school which was long before PCs.
In any case, the amount of RAM is not adequate to predict performance. You need to know cache sizes also. Any modern microprocessor has lots of memory on chip. Most RAM, strictly speaking.
I think hard-drives becoming so cheap and large is the reason “memory” has come to just mean RAM. In most cases you can just assume someone has infinite permanent storage space, so in most conversations RAM is the memory that matters.
I was just in a computer shop, and the tech was talking about replacing the disk drive with a solid state drive (flash?) Boot-up for Windows 7 is now a matter of seconds. Nice!
Even back in the 80s it was well known that RAM was really not a good term for it. RAM, of course, stands for Random Access Memory and ROM stands for Read Only Memory. Problem is, ROM can also be randomly accessed. Read-Write Memory would be a better term, but RWM isn’t very pronounceable for most english speakers.
Interesting. I have not noted a decline in its use. I still call it RAM myself.
I suspect that the term was coined in contrast to memory that did not have uniform access speeds, like drum memory. It was not meant to be the “opposite” of ROM.