Random Access Memory (RAM)
RAM is a type of memory which allows access to the stored data in any sequence and from any physical location within the memory. RAM can be read and written with new data. The main benefit of RAM is that it takes almost same time in accessing any data in it, irrespective of the location of data. This makes RAM a very fast memory. Computers can read from RAM very quickly and also they can write new data in RAM very quickly.
How does RAM look like?
Commercially available regular RAM chips can be easily plugged-in and plugged-out a computer’s motherboard. The following image shows the RAM chips.
Read Only Memory (ROM)
As the name suggests, data is written in ROM only once and permanently. After that, data can only be read by computers. Read only memory is often used to install the permanent instructions into a computer. These instructions will never change. ROM chips store the basic input/output system (BIOS) of a computer. The following image shows a commercially available ROM BIOS chip.
Difference between RAM and ROM
The following table lists the main differences between Random-access and Read-only memory. RAM and ROM are both integral parts of a modern computer system. Do you want to know when ROM is working and when RAM is in play? Well, when you switch on your computer, you may see a black screen with some white text. This text comes from ROM. The ROM instructions control the computer for first few second when you power it on. During this period instructions like “how to read from hard disk”, “how to print on screen” are loaded from ROM. Once computer is capable of doing these basic operations, the operating system (Windows/Linux/OSX etc.) is read from hard disk and loaded in RAM. The following video explains RAM vs. ROM concept further.
When you open a program like Microsoft Word, the program is loaded from computer’s hard disk into the RAM. We hope this article helped you in understanding the main differences between RAM and ROM. If you have any questions related with this subject, please feel free to ask in the comments section. We will try to assist you. Thank you for using TechWelkin!
