Computers are now part of everyone life and people are using on regular basis but do your know how it works and what is its memory? Today you will know about RAM and its types. The RAM technology has seen several improvements in the past few years. There are several types of computer memories, categorized on the basis of speed and effectiveness. Let’s have a look…
SRAM
SRAM means static RAM and was the first type of RAM in the market. SRAM can be accessed at about 10 nanoseconds, meaning that it takes approximately 20ns for the processor to receive requested information from SRAM. It has a data capacity of about 256KB. It is commonly used for system cache because it is it is faster than DRAM.
DRAM
Dynamic RAM was developed because of the great expenses experienced in using SRAM. The DRAM chips are much slower compared to the SRAM chips, meaning that they can store several megabytes of data on a single chip. The DRAM chip can draw more power from the computer. Because of its low cost and high capacity, it is used as the “main” memory in the computer.
EDO RAM
Extended Data Out (EDO) RAM is an improvement of the traditional DRAM as it performs one task at a time. As one piece if data is sent to the processor, another is retrieved from RAM module. During transfer of the data, EDO RAM looks for the next piece to retrieve for the processor. The process enables the data to be accessed in 60ns. For EDO RAM chips to be used the computer system’s processor and motherboard should support its use.
SDRAM
Synchronous dynamic RAM (SDRAM) is capable of running at the speed of the system bus, (from 100 to 133 MHZ), making it to run twice as fast as EDO RAM. Despite this speed, SDRAM and EDO are being replaced by faster types of DRAM like DDR RAM and RDRAM. Just like EDO RAM, SDRAM can only be used in systems that support it.
RDRAM
This was developed by a company called Rambus Inc, hence its name, Rambus Dynamic RAM. It uses a special Rambus channel with a data transfer rate of 800MHZ, but its channel width can be doubled to a 1.6GHZ data transfer. However, it can only be used in computers with RDRAM slots and channels. As it is fairly new, it can only be used in computers that were manufactured before 1999.
DDR RAM
Double data rate (DDR) RAM is twice as fast as the standard RAM (it doubles the rate at which SDRAM processes data). The standards available for DDR memory are PC 1600, PC 2100 and PC 2700, with the PC width referring to the total bandwidth of the memory.
VRAM
Video RAM (VRAM) is a type of memory specialized to be used only with video adapters. The video adapter is one of the computer’s most busy components, so to keep up with video requirements; many adapters have an onboard micro-processor and special video RAM. VRAM is faster than EDO RAM, with the ability of being written to and read form at the same time. This results to a better and faster performance of the video.

WRAM
Window RAM (WRAM) is a type of RAM with a faster access than VRAM. It uses the same dual-ported technology, allowing deices to write and read data to the video memory at the same time.