Memory Hierarchy

Memory Hierarchy is an enhancement to organize the memory such that it can

minimize the access time. The Memory Hierarchy was developed based on a
program behavior known as locality of references. The figure below clearly
demonstrates the different levels of the memory hierarchy.

Characteristics of Memory Hierarchy

• Capacity: It is the global volume of information the memory can store. As
we move from top to bottom in the Hierarchy, the capacity increases.
• Access Time: It is the time interval between the read/write request and the
availability of the data. As we move from top to bottom in the Hierarchy, the
access time increases.
• Performance: Earlier when the computer system was designed without a
Memory Hierarchy design, the speed gap increased between the CPU
registers and Main Memory due to a large difference in access time. This
results in lower performance of the system and thus, enhancement was
required. This enhancement was made in the form of Memory Hierarchy
Design because of which the performance of the system increases. One of
the most significant ways to increase system performance is minimizing how
far down the memory hierarchy one has to go to manipulate data.
• Cost Per Bit: As we move from bottom to top in the Hierarchy, the cost per
bit increases i.e. Internal Memory is costlier than External Memory.

Memory Hierarchy Diagram-

Memory Hierarchy Design

1. Registers
Registers are small, high-speed memory units located in the CPU. They are used
to store the most frequently used data and instructions. Registers have the fastest
access time and the smallest storage capacity, typically ranging from 16 to 64
bits.
2. Cache Memory
Cache memory is a small, fast memory unit located close to the CPU. It stores
frequently used data and instructions that have been recently accessed from the
main memory. Cache memory is designed to minimize the time it takes to access
data by providing the CPU with quick access to frequently used data.
3. Main Memory
Main memory, also known as RAM (Random Access Memory), is the primary
memory of a computer system. It has a larger storage capacity than cache
memory, but it is slower. Main memory is used to store data and instructions that
are currently in use by the CPU.
4. Secondary Storage
Secondary storage, such as hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD),
is a non-volatile memory unit that has a larger storage capacity than main
memory. It is used to store data and instructions that are not currently in use by
the CPU. Secondary storage has the slowest access time and is typically the least
expensive type of memory in the memory hierarchy.
5. Magnetic Disk
Magnetic Disks are simply circular plates that are fabricated with either a metal or
a plastic or a magnetized material. Magnetic disks work at a high speed inside the
computer and these are frequently used.
6. Magnetic Tape
Magnetic Tape is simply a magnetic recording device that is covered with a plastic
film. It is generally used for the backup of data. In the case of a magnetic tape,
the access time for a computer is a little slower and therefore, it requires some
amount of time for accessing the strip.

Cache Memory:
Cache memory as well between the main memory and processor. The rate of
exchanging data and information is substantially higher compared to other memory
of computer system. The cache memory saves and holds the data or set of
information that is about to be processed immediately by the system.

The cache memory is not available to users. They cannot delete, update, refresh
the programs inside the memory, the manufacturer, or the computer programmers
can erase or update the data which is stored inside the cache memory.

Computer memory
Computer memory is any physical device capable of storing information
temporarily, like RAM (random access memory), or permanently, like ROM (read-
only memory). Memory devices utilize integrated circuits and are used by operating
systems, software, and hardware.

The key difference between primary and secondary memory is speed of access.
• Primary memory includes ROM and RAM, and is located close to the CPU on
the computer motherboard, enabling the CPU to read data from primary
memory very quickly indeed. It is used to store data that the CPU needs
imminently so that it does not have to wait for it to be delivered.
• Secondary memory by contrast, is usually physically located within a
separate storage device, such as a hard disk drive or solid state drive (SSD),
which is connected to the computer system either directly or over a network.
The cost per gigabyte of secondary memory is much lower, but the read and
write speeds are significantly slower.

Types of Computer Memory: Primary and Secondary Memory

Although many types of memory in a computer exist, the most basic distinction is
between primary memory, often called system memory, and secondary memory,
which is more commonly called storage.

Primary memory:
Primary memory is also known as main memory or may also refer to "Internal
memory." and primary storage. All those types of computer memories that are
directly accessed by the processor using data bus are called primary memory. That
allows a processor to access stores running programs and currently processed data
that stored in a memory location.

The use of memories is therefore mandatory in all systems using a microprocessor,

including computers. An example of Primary memory is RAM and ROM that store
programs. These memories are limited in capacity and manufactured by using
integrated circuits (IC) or semiconductor device. Its speed of Data accessing is
faster than secondary memory. It is more expensive than secondary memory.
When you turn on the computer, Generally CPU searches for essential codes in RAM
to get it. Otherwise, it goes to ROM. Yes, they both chips collectively called primary
memory in a computer system.

Types of Primary Memory

RAM (Random Access Memory)
The Word “RAM” stands for “Rndom Access Memory” or may also refer to short-
term memory. It’s called “random” because you can read store data randomly at
any time and from any physical location. It is a temporal storage memory. RAM is
volatile that only retains all the data as long as the computer powered. It is the
fastest type of memory. RAM stores the currently processed data from the CPU and
sends them to the graphics unit.

There are generally two broad subcategories of RAM:

• Static RAM: Static RAM is the form of RAM and made with flipflops and used
for primary storage are volatile. It retains data in latch as long as the
computer powered. SRAM is more expensive and consumes more power than
DRAM. It used as Cache Memory in a computer system. As technically, SRAM
uses more transistors as compared to DRAM. It is faster compared to DRAM
due to the latching arrangement, and they use 6 transistors per data bit as
compared to DRAM, which uses one transistor per bit.
• Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM): It is another form of RAM
used as Main Memory, its retains information in Capacitors for a short period
(a few milliseconds) even though the computer powered. The Data is
Refreshed Periodically to maintain in it. The DRAM is cheaper, but it can store
much more information. Moreover, it is also slower and consumes less power
than SRAM.

ROM (Read Only Memory)

ROM is the long-term internal memory. ROM is “Non-Volatile Memory” that retains
data without the flow of electricity. ROM is an essential chip with permanently
written data or programs. It is similar to the RAM that is accessed by the CPU. ROM
comes with pre-written by the computer manufacturer to hold the instructions for
booting-up the computer.
There is generally three broad type of ROM:
• PROM (Programmable Read Only Memory): PROM stands for
programmable ROM. It can be programmed only be done once and read
many. Unlike ROM, PROMs retain their contents without the flow of
electricity. PROM is also nonvolatile memory. The significant difference
between a ROM and a PROM is that a ROM comes with pre-written by the
computer manufacturer whereas PROM manufactured as blank memory.
PROM can be programmed by PROM burner and by blowing internal fuses
permanently.
• EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory): EPROM is
pronounced EEPROM. This memory type retains its contents until it exposed
to intense ultraviolet light that clears its contents, making it possible to
reprogram the memory.
• EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory):
EEPROM can be burned (programmed) and erased by first electrical waves in
a millisecond. A single byte of a data or the entire contents of device can be
erased. To write or erase this memory type, you need a device called a PROM
burner.

Secondary memory
If we need to store large amount of data or programs permanently, we need a
cheaper and permanent memory. Such memory is called secondary memory.
Here we will discuss secondary memory devices that can be used to store large
amount of data, audio, video and multimedia files.

Characteristics of Secondary Memory

These are some characteristics of secondary memory, which distinguish it from
primary memory −
• It is non-volatile, i.e. it retains data when power is switched off
• It is large capacities to the tune of terabytes
• It is cheaper as compared to primary memory
Depending on whether secondary memory device is part of CPU or not, there are
two types of secondary memory – fixed and removable.
Let us look at some of the secondary memory devices available.

Hard Disk Drive

Hard disk drive is made up of a series of circular
disks called platters arranged one over the
other almost ½ inches apart around a spindle.
Disks are made of non-magnetic material like
aluminum alloy and coated with 10-20 mm of
magnetic material.

Standard diameter of these disks is 14 inches and they rotate with speeds varying
from 4200 rpm (rotations per minute) for personal computers to 15000 rpm for
servers. Data is stored by magnetizing or demagnetizing the magnetic coating. A
magnetic reader arm is used to read data from and write data to the disks. A
typical modern HDD has capacity in terabytes (TB).

Floppy disk
Floppy disk is a soft magnetic disk. It is called floppy because it flops if you wave it
(at least, the 5¼-inch variety does). Unlike most hard disks, floppy disks (often
called floppies or diskettes) are portable, because you can remove them from a disk
drive. Disk drives for floppy disks are called floppy drives. Floppy disks are slower
to access than hard disks and have less storage capacity, but they are much less
expensive. And most importantly, they are portable.
Standard Sizes
Floppies come in three basic sizes:
• 8-inch: The first floppy disk design, invented by IBM in the late 1960s and
used in the early 1970s as first a read-only format and then as a read-write
format. The typical desktop/laptop computer does not use the 8-inch floppy
disk.
• 5¼-inch: The common size for PCs made before 1987 and the predecessor
to the 8-inch floppy disk. This type of floppy is generally capable
of storing between 100K and 1.2MB (megabytes) of data. The most common
sizes are 360K and 1.2MB.
• 3½-inch: Floppy is something of a misnomer for these disks, as they are
encased in a rigid envelope. Despite their small size, microfloppies have a
larger storage capacity than their cousins -- from 400K to 1.4MB of data. The
most common sizes for PCs are 720K (double-density) and 1.44MB (high-
density). Macintoshes support disks of 400K, 800K, and 1.2MB.

CD Drive
CD stands for Compact Disk. CDs are circular disks that use optical rays, usually
lasers, to read and write data. They are very cheap as you can get 700 MB of
storage space for less than a dollar. CDs are inserted in CD drives built into CPU
cabinet. They are portable as you can eject the drive, remove the CD and carry it
with you. There are three types of CDs −
• CD-ROM (Compact Disk – Read Only Memory) − The data on these CDs
are recorded by the manufacturer. Proprietary Software, audio or video are
released on CD-ROMs.
• CD-R (Compact Disk – Recordable) − Data can be written by the user
once on the CD-R. It cannot be deleted or modified later.
• CD-RW (Compact Disk – Rewritable) − Data can be written and deleted
on these optical disks again and again.

DVD Drive
DVD stands for Digital Video Display. DVD is optical
devices that can store 15 times the data held by CDs. They
are usually used to store rich multimedia files that need
high storage capacity. DVDs also come in three varieties –
read only, recordable and rewritable.

Flash Drive
Flash drives are a higher performance option when compared
to hard disk drives or compact disks with massive storage
capacity ranging from 512GB to 1TB. The modern flash
memory drives are accessed much like hard disks in which the controller system
has full control over what and how information is stored. Flash drives are smaller,
portable solid state drives that can be used as a solid substitute for CDS and HDDs.
When plugged into a computer’s USB port, the OS recognizes the device as a
removable device. They can be further used to store and backup data from one
location to another. They have no moving parts and are strong enough to withstand
mechanical shocks and intense pressure.

Thumb Drive
USB thumb drives, or pen drives, are small, portable data storage devices that use
flash memory to store data meaning they can be erases and reprogrammed to be
used again to store data. They are small electronic devices, basically with the shape
of a human thumb, used to store and transfer electronic data from one computer to
another through the USB port. USB is the industry standard plug-and-play interface
that allows computers to communicate with other peripheral devices such as
mouse, keyboard, printer, etc. Thumb drives use three standard USB specifications
1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 that allow for faster data transfer rates.

Difference between Thumb Drive and Flash Drive

1. Meaning of Thumb Drive and Flash Drive
While USB drive is a generic term used to describe a series of storage devices
that can be plugged directly into a USB port for your personal computer or
laptop. Colloquially, people may refer thumb drive as a flash drive as if they are
same storage device. While both serve the same basic purpose – that is to store
data or any digital content – they are technically very different. Flash drives,
also referred to as compact flash (CF), use flash memory in an enclosed disc to
store data, whereas a flash drive is a small solid-state drive (SSD) used as a
standard mobile USB storage device that connects to a device through a USB
port.
2. fnTechnology involved in Thumb Drive and Flash Drive
Flash drive is a type of storage medium that uses flash memory meaning it’s a
non-volatile memory chip that can be electronically erased and reprogrammed
before it can be used again. As they have no moving parts, they are more
efficient and reliable than the standard USB drives, plus they are smaller and
faster. Thumb drives, as the name suggest, are basically USB drives or pen
drives that pops into a computer’s USB port. These are portable solid-state
drives with the size of a human thumb and are used for storing and retrieving
data.
3. Use of Thumb Drive and Flash Drive
Flash drives are small and lightweight, and have thousands of times more
storage capacity. Flash memory devices are mainly used in digital cameras, MP3
players, USB flash drives, and solid-state drives. As they are non-volatile, they
 have fast access time. They are often used to store digital content or
information as floppy disks and CDs were once used for. Thumb drives are used
for the basic purpose to store files and to copy/transfer files from one computer
to another. They are usually available in 16, 32, or 64GB versions with three
main USB specifications – USB 1.0, USB 2.0, and USB 3.0 – each allows for
faster data transfer rates than its predecessor.
4. Durability of Thumb Drive and Flash Drive
While there is an abundance of thumb drives on the market, only a few are as
durable as the more rugged flash drives. They are super small and extremely
mobile but they usually come enclosed in plastic or aluminum casings which
make them a little vulnerable to shocks and pressure. Flash drives, on the other
hand, are extremely durable and are able to withstand mechanical shocks,
intense pressure, and accidental falls. Unlike thumb drives, they don’t degrade
with age, but rather of their write cycles meaning more you erase and
reprogram for reuse, the more the device starts degrading.

Thumb Drive vs. Flash Drive

Blu Ray Disk

Blu Ray Disk (BD) is an optical storage media used to store high definition (HD)
video and other multimedia filed. BD uses shorter wavelength laser as compared to
CD/DVD. This enables writing arm to focus more tightly on the disk and hence pack
in more data. BDs can store up to 128 GB data.
Managing Disk Partitioning
Disk partitioning is one step of disk formatting. It is the process of dividing a disk
into one or more regions, the so called partitions. If a partition is created, the disk
will store the information about the location and size of partitions in partition
table that is usually located in the first sector of a disk.

With the partition table, each partition can appear to the operating system as a
logical disk and users can read and write data on disk. And each partition can be
managed separately.

Partitions are categorized as primary partition and extended partition. As we all

know, a MBR disk can be at most divided into 4 primary partitions or 3 primary
partitions plus 1 extended partition. And the extended partition can be divided into
a number of logical partitions. As for a GPT disk, it can be at most divided into 128
primary partitions without extended partition.

What's the Purpose of Partitioning a Hard Drive

Some users may ask why partition a hard drive. Actually, there are many
advantages of disk partitioning as follows.

1. Use of New Hard Disk

A newly bought hard disk can't be used to save data unless users partition it. To be
specific, users should initialize the disk (MBR or GPT) and create one or more
partitions with capacity, file system, cluster size, drive letter, etc.

2. Ease of Windows Reinstallation

It's better to have two or more partitions in a computer. One partition is used as
system partition to store operating system boot files that can boot Windows. The
rest partitions can be used to store apps' installation packages and other personal
files.

If you want to reinstall Windows someday, all you have to do is to format the
system partition and reinstall the OS. The installed programs and personal files will
stay where you left them.

3. Better Organization
Some users like to place their data into a certain place according data types.
Partitions make it easier. You can create partitions for games, music, or other
documents.

4. Easier Backup
If you know on which partition the data you want to backup is stored, but you don't
know the exact file path, you can back up the whole partition. Backing up partition
is better than backing up whole hard drive or finding out the exact files in a huge
number of files.

5. Simpler Data Recovery

If the data is deleted mistakenly, and you know where it is stored on, scanning a
partition for data recovery is faster and more convenient than scanning the whole
hard drive.

File system
Alternatively referred to as file management or FS, a file system is a method of
organizing and retrieving files from a storage medium (e.g., hard drive). File
systems usually consist of files separated into groups called directories. Directories
can contain files or additional directories. Today, the most commonly used file
system with Windows is NTFS.
Without file management, all files would have no organization and it would be
impossible for a file with the same name to exist. Files are most often managed in
a hierarchy, which allows you to view files in the current directory and then
navigate into any subdirectories.

Examples of file systems

• FAT (e.g., FAT16 and FAT32)
• GFS
• HFS
• NTFS
• UDF
FAT
Short for file allocation table, FAT is a method of keeping track of the contents of
a hard drive used by early Microsoft operating systems
that was first introduced in 1977. The table is a chart
of numbers that correspond to cluster addresses on the
hard drive. Below is a listing of the different types of
FAT and the operating systems using them.

Today, later versions of Microsoft Windows, such as

Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 10, are using NTFS and not FAT.
GFS

1) Global File System, GFS was first developed at the

University of Minnesota and now maintained by Red Hat. GFS is
a file system that spans across a cluster and allows
multiple computers to act as a unified machine.

Documentation for Global File System and Global File System 2 is at the following
links.

2) Google File System, GFS is the file system used by Google for its own use.

HFS
Short for hierarchical file system, HFS is a file system used to store the files
on floppy disks, CD-ROM discs, and hard drives of older Apple Macintosh
computers. Since OS X was introduced, Apple no longer supports the ability to write
to or format HFS disks.

NTFS
Short for NTFS file system, NTFS is a file organization system that stores and
accesses information on Microsoft Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows
XP, Windows 7, and Windows 10. NTFS offers better methods of data protection
and file recovery than the previous FAT file system versions.

1. Universal Disk Format, UDF is a file system first developed in 1995 by OSTA
(Optical Storage Technology Association) and is commonly used
with CD and DVD drives. UDF is supported on all operating systems, which allows a
CD created on a Windows machine to be readable on a Macintosh machine.

2. User-defined function, UDF is a function that can be modified to fit the user's
needs.

3. Short for user-defined font, UDF is a font specified by the user and not the
software program.