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For example, the sample diagram does not indicate the physical type of connection between the PCs and the switch, but since a modern LAN is depicted, Ethernet may be assumed. If the same style of line was used in a WAN (wide area network) diagram, however, it may indicate a different type of connection.
A portion of the computer's hard drive is set aside for a paging file or a scratch partition, and the combination of physical RAM and the paging file form the system's total memory. (For example, if a computer has 2 GB (1024 3 B) of RAM and a 1 GB page file, the operating system has 3 GB total memory available to it.)
In computer science, random-access machine (RAM or RA-machine) is a model of computation that describes an abstract machine in the general class of register machines. The RA-machine is very similar to the counter machine but with the added capability of 'indirect addressing' of its registers.
Those who required real RAM-like performance and non-volatility typically have had to use conventional RAM devices and a battery backup. For example, IBM PC's and successors beginning with the IBM PC AT used nonvolatile BIOS memory, often called CMOS RAM or parameter RAM, and this was a common solution in other early microcomputer systems like ...
Logic circuits without memory cells are called combinational, meaning the output depends only on the present input. But memory is a key element of digital systems. In computers, it allows to store both programs and data and memory cells are also used for temporary storage of the output of combinational circuits to be used later by digital systems.
As an example, if a problem can be described as a pipeline where data x is processed subsequently through functions f, g, h, etc. (the result is h(g(f(x)))), then this can be expressed as a distributed memory problem where the data is transmitted first to the node that performs f that passes the result onto the second node that computes g, and ...
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The operating system will place actively used data in RAM, which is much faster than hard disks. When the amount of RAM is not sufficient to run all the current programs, it can result in a situation where the computer spends more time moving data from RAM to disk and back than it does accomplishing tasks; this is known as thrashing.