The Future of Memory

Without memory, all the computation, all the cool graphic cards and dongles in the world would be rendered entirely useless. This article provides an overview of trends in memory—and some future developments that just might change computer memory as we know it entirely.

A quick refresher before we begin. Computer memory is written in binary code, that is, in a series of 1s and 0s. Each of these digits is referred to as a binary digit, or bit. Memory can be stored on any physical system that can be easily turned from one easy-to-differentiate state to another, or a bistate, with one state representing 1s and one state representing 0s. So, the medium through which memory is stored can vary a lot.

From here, there's one main division in types of memory: volatile and non-volatile.

Volatile memory is memory that requires power to retain stored information. Volatile memory is vastly more expensive than its counterpart, but much quicker to access, hence its use as temporary memory. It will generally consist of a series of extremely small electronic switches that can be turned on and off, usually with capacitors and transistors.

Non-volatile memory does not require power to sustain it. This tends to make up most of permanent memory, which will use more physical ways to store memory, such as pitted plastic disks or tape with magnetic coating. Non-volatile memory tends to be much cheaper, so it is used whenever speed is not of the essence.

Essentially, the trend with memory can be summarized as such: more memory, smaller size, cheaper prices. That's it, no matter what type of memory you're speaking of. This simple trend does not look like it'll be stopping anytime soon, either. There's a sort of positive feedback cycle involved: as more memory becomes more cheaply available, programs become more memory intensive, which in turn requires more memory, so more memory is made more cheaply available... and so on and so forth. Because the turnover rate is so quick, even last month's products can be incredibly cheap: a mere few weeks seeing the cutting edge of memory and storage speeds, power use, and size, move forward. We've a ways to go before hitting any physical ceiling that'll put a stop on memory development.

No matter what memory storage device you bring to mind, from flash drives to computer hard drives, memory capacity has been increasing, often doubling over the course of a mere few months. Whole terabytes are now available in external hard drives. 64-bit architecture means that there is no 4GB limit to RAM, and computers that take advantage of this are growing in popularity.

The physical size required for such devices is decreasing as well. Those multi-terabyte hard drives won't be much bigger than a slice of toast or two, and they're only set to continue shrinking. Mostly, the increased capacity and smaller size are made possible by increasing the density of memory. Physically, this is due to ever improving techniques to put the electronics involved closer and closer together. Without new advancements in the field, a practical barrier will at some point be met with regards to increasing memory density even further—we just don't know where yet. Think Moore's Law, which is having more problems with economic rather than electronic issues.

Everyone needs memory. Despite demand being so high, manufacturers are more than meeting the requirements. While the very cutting edge of memory will always be a bit pricy, even just buying a few weeks after any given product has entered the product can result in dramatically reduced prices.

Check out the next page for some cutting new technologies that might just change the face of memory as we know it.