Timeline for Why does RAM have to be volatile?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
12 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Sep 16, 2013 at 7:55 | audit | First posts | |||
| Sep 16, 2013 at 7:56 | |||||
| Sep 5, 2013 at 20:11 | comment | added | Luciano | @MSalters: Some guys compare technologies of memories (including volatile and non-volatile) using only their bandwidths, rarely their latencies. Your response at least suggests the latency properties by the physis. Maybe you could improve it detailing the issue of latencies. | |
| Sep 4, 2013 at 9:55 | comment | added | MSalters | @geezanansa: CMOS is a very common IC technology (Complementary MOS, a mix of PMOS and NMOS, which are Positive and Negative Metal On Silicon). | |
| Sep 4, 2013 at 9:24 | comment | added | geezanansa | Perhaps adding some relevant info regarding NVRAM may help provide an even better answer. Is CMOS at type of non volatile memory albeit ROM? | |
| Sep 3, 2013 at 7:12 | comment | added | MSalters | @leftaroundabout: Neither SRAM nor DRAM can store a bit for a longer period of time without some form of refreshing that bit (turning a 0.2 back into a crisp 0 bit). SRAM just does that continuously whereas DRAM does it in a rewrite cycle. | |
| Sep 3, 2013 at 7:03 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | @MSalters parasitic or not, any FET has a capacitance. My point is, it's not actually necessary to store much energy in a capacitor, or an inductor or anything, to preserve information over a long time. | |
| Sep 3, 2013 at 6:50 | comment | added | MSalters | @leftaroundabout: SRAM doesn't have capacitors at all, except parasitic and perhaps some research designs. | |
| Sep 2, 2013 at 21:44 | comment | added | leftaroundabout | You probably avoid mentioning this because it's too "deep down in physics", but I'd like to say that the barrier is less about energy than entropy. SRAM has even smaller capacitors than DRAM and yet doesn't leak, because it uses field-effect transistors instead of resistors – which, vaguely speaking, bypass interference from thermal noise via an externally supplied voltage threshold. Only a few die shrinks into the future will we reach another type on interference – quantum tunnelling – where an actual energy barrier will be the only way to preserve classical information. | |
| Sep 1, 2013 at 19:55 | history | edited | MSalters | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 15 characters in body
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| Aug 31, 2013 at 17:01 | comment | added | Mark Adler | The accepted answer doesn't actually answer the question, whereas this one does. | |
| Aug 30, 2013 at 16:12 | comment | added | Synetech | Great answer! You actually answered the why of it and in an easy to understand way no less. | |
| Aug 30, 2013 at 15:23 | history | answered | MSalters | CC BY-SA 3.0 |