Why is storage bigger than RAM?

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Essentially, RAM comes in small sizes (8, 16, 32 GB) but storage is in TB? Why is
this? Would more RAM be better?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

The way modern computers are designed, they require both RAM (working memory to facilitate executing programs) and storage (long term memory, to persist data between power cycles so it can be used later). So we cannot make generalised statements about one being better than the other.

Today, both types of storage retain data by trapping electric charge in tiny electronic components.

Due to the nature of physics (subatomic behaviour of electricity, limitations of the materials used), there is a trade off between being fast and being persistent. Random Access Memory and Solid State Drives take opposite extremes of these trade-offs, with RAM being orders of magnitude faster than SSD, but needs constant power to retain data; while SSDs can retain data for years without power, but the electronics physically take longer to change state (so they are slower) and also degrade after a certain number of changes.

More importantly however, RAM is much more expensive per-GB compared to SSDs, that’s why you’re seeing such size differences. Luckily (or perhaps, intentionally), computers are designed to work efficiently with smaller amounts of faster (and thus more expensive) components and larger amounts of slower components.

I suspect if we were able to build a data storage technology that was both as fast and reliable as RAM but as cheap and persistent as SSDs, computers would be designed differently (though you probably still want a section of memory that can reset program state in the event of errors, which is the role RAM serves now). But that hasn’t been the case since we first invented computers, and as mentioned the physics involved makes it unlikely.

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