Factors affecting the choice of memory
Claude F. King · 1961
One of the fundamental choices in the design of a computer or data processing system is concerned with the medium for the storage of information. Once the system requirements impose the need for information storage that exceeds a certain level, typically several hundred bits, a hierarchy principle of memory sets in. As expressed by Von Neumann, the system may call for an overall storage of N words at an access time t. For economic or other reasons it may be more practical to provide for some smaller quantity of storage N, with an access time t1= t and obtain the total storage N at some longer access time depending on the system needs. Extending this reasoning then to the more general case there would be a sequence of capacities N1