Information and Communication Technology

2.1.12 Features of Memory

Main memory (or simply memory) is used to store programs and data required for processing a given application. Memory can be thought of as a series of cells, each of which can store a piece of information (usually one character). This piece of information is usually arranged as a chain of 8 bits , known as a byte . Memories are often rated in terms of their information stooge capacity. Typically, capacities of memories are expressed as KB (kilobytes), MB (megabytes) or GB (gigabytes).

IKB = 2¹⁰ = 1024 bytes

IMB = 2²⁰ = 1,048,576 bytes

IGB = 2³⁰ = 1,073,741,824 bytes

Memories are generally classified by the nature of accessibility of the information and are divided into two major categories, namely, random access memory (RAM) and read only memory (ROM ) . ROM further has many types as illustrated below.