Why adding RAM makes a computer faster
Posted On Monday, April 28th, 2008 By Ravi
The computer, just like a human brain needs to think. As we all have learned in school, we know that the computers have got a lot to do with math. And when we do math, we need some scratch pads (if we aren’t using calculators) for doing some rough work. the RAM or the Random Access Memory is just for that. The RAM is an ultra high speed memory device, volatile unfortunately, and it assists the processor in making the calculations. With a smaller amount of Ram, naturally, the processor will have to work with a smaller sized scratch pad, and the values that it can store parallel is highly reduced. For Example,
Lets say, the computer wants to add 221+221, 1+8, 14+14 and 21+21. The computer is a super fast device that it really doesn’t need any Ram to process the above values, but let us assume these as scaled down values so that its easy on the human brain. A school Kid does math on this like 1+1 = 2, 2+2 = 4, 2+2 = 4, and the total is 224.
A computer can do these calculations one by one if given only limited amount of RAM, or get them done at greater speeds in parallel if given more Ram. Lets say, the first calculation requires 1 MB of RAM, and if the computer has only a 1 MB Ram chip, it will do the first calculation first, then clear the Ram, and then move on to the 2nd calculation. Lets imagine, the computer has 2 MB of Ram, and we will find the computer processing 2 calculations at a time and the total time consumed to have all 4 calculations processed is halved.
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