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The maximum random access memory (RAM) installed in any computer system is limited by hardware, software and economic factors. The hardware may have a limited number of address bus bits, limited by the processor package or design of the system. Some of the address space may be shared between RAM, peripherals, and read-only memory.
When used for swap, zram (like zswap) allows Linux to make more efficient use of RAM, since the operating system can then hold more pages of memory in the compressed swap than if the same amount of RAM had been used as application memory or disk cache. This is particularly effective on machines that do not have much memory.
A space–time trade off can be applied to the problem of data storage. If data is stored uncompressed, it takes more space but access takes less time than if the data were stored compressed (since compressing the data reduces the amount of space it takes, but it takes time to run the decompression algorithm). Depending on the particular ...
Many computer systems have a memory hierarchy consisting of processor registers, on-die SRAM caches, external caches, DRAM, paging systems and virtual memory or swap space on a hard drive. This entire pool of memory may be referred to as "RAM" by many developers, even though the various subsystems can have very different access times ...
Computer memory stores information, such as data and programs, for immediate use in the computer. [2] The term memory is often synonymous with the terms RAM, main memory, or primary storage. Archaic synonyms for main memory include core (for magnetic core memory) and store. [3]
On x86-based PCs, extended memory is only available with an Intel 80286 processor or higher. Only these chips can directly address more than 1 megabyte of RAM.The earlier 8086/8088 processors can make use of more than 1 MB of RAM if one employs special hardware to make selectable parts of it appear at addresses below 1 MB.
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Those machines, and subsequent machines supporting memory paging, use either a set of page address registers or in-memory page tables [d] to allow the processor to operate on arbitrary pages anywhere in RAM as a seemingly contiguous logical address space. These pages became the units exchanged between disk and RAM.