Once upon a time, magazine ads for computers were actually readable. Not only were there fewer processors to choose from, there were also fewer choices in everything else, from hard disks to sound cards. Today, the choices boggle the mind.
Acronyms run rampant.
And as if it weren't bad enough having to deal with all the other jargon, we now have to confront a seemingly limitless variety of memory types. It used to be enough to have RAM, but now RAM always seems to have one or more extra letters in front of it. We don't have the space to cover them all, but you'll find the most frequently encountered RAM varieties in this glossary. The CPU uses its RAM as a storage area for data, calculation results, and program instructions, drawing on this storage as necessary to perform the tasks required by programs. In order to store data and draw from the data store, the CPU specifies the memory address of the required information.