The Memory or Store
B. S. Walker · 1982
Memory storage devices lend themselves particularly well to the techniques of microcircuit fabrication since they consist primarily of regular arrays of identical elements. The technique of manufacturing them commercially preceded that of the microprocessor itself. The necessity of expanding the market for these storage devices lent a good deal of impetus to the development of the much more difficult and less lucrative technology of microprocessor production. Microcircuit storage devices also have a significant effect on the whole nature of the microprocessor system. Designers of computer systems before the days of the microprocessor were continually confronted with the major problem that there could never be enough fast working store. However big the system, the tasks for which it was designed always demanded more fast store than the customer, even the richest, could afford. Hence computer stores were always hierarchic with as much fast store as could reasonably be provided backed up by mass stores for which the cost per bit was at least an order of magnitude less.