4 ms·

I consider myself pretty tech savvy and call hard drives memory. HDDs exist in the middle of a memory hierarchy stretching from registers to cloud storage.

by 9991 4y ago

throwawaylinux 4y ago
You're not wrong, they are a kind of memory. I think more people would understand you if you call RAM memory and HDDs and SDDs storage though. It goes the other way too, RAM is a type of storage, which is the terminology IBM uses (and I think has used since the 60s or so).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cuu508 4y ago
  Memory is where you store data
- 9991 4y ago
  I don’t really care if the unwashed masses understand me.
glandium 4y ago
Do you call them RAM, though?
- 9991 4y ago
  Never thought about it before, but I guess SSDs are random access, so it would be technically correct to call them RAM, and that’s my favorite kind of correct.
  - atq2119 4y ago
    Jumping on the nitpick train: SSDs are less randomly write-access memory because of the requirement to explicitly erase an entire block before you can rewrite it. RAM doesn't have this constraint. It has other constraints, like writing and refreshing rows at a time, but combined with the difference in erase cycles causing wear in flash, you do end up with a significant difference in just how randomly you can access these memories.
    - tromp 4y ago
      SRAM is the only type of memory offering true random access. DRAM can suffer so much on pure random access that completely rewriting your algorithm to have mostly sequential access to 20x more memory still ends up 4x faster (lean miner vs mean miner in [1]). [1] https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo
    - account42 4y ago
      Well as long as we are nitpicking: random access does not say anything about the block size - you're not going to be writing individual random bits whith any kind of memory. And random access also does not say that all blocks have the same access time, only that the time does not depend on what you have accessed previously. In conclusion, an array of spinning rust drives is random access memory.
- omgmajk 4y ago
  My mother calls the entire computer "hard drive", leftover from old newspapers in the 90'ies.
  - soylentcola 4y ago
    Yep. Most faculty/staff where I work either call a desktop computer a "hard drive" or a "CPU".

I consider myself pretty tech savvy and call hard drives memory. HDDs exist in the middle of a memory hierarchy stretching from registers to cloud storage.

by 9991 4y ago

I consider myself pretty tech savvy and call hard drives memory. HDDs exist in the middle of a memory hierarchy stretching from registers to cloud storage.

throwawaylinux 4y ago

You're not wrong, they are a kind of memory. I think more people would understand you if you call RAM memory and HDDs and SDDs storage though. It goes the other way too, RAM is a type of storage, which is the terminology IBM uses (and I think has used since the 60s or so).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cuu508 4y ago
Memory is where you store data
9991 4y ago
I don’t really care if the unwashed masses understand me.

glandium 4y ago

Do you call them RAM, though?

9991 4y ago
Never thought about it before, but I guess SSDs are random access, so it would be technically correct to call them RAM, and that’s my favorite kind of correct.
- atq2119 4y ago
  Jumping on the nitpick train: SSDs are less randomly write-access memory because of the requirement to explicitly erase an entire block before you can rewrite it. RAM doesn't have this constraint. It has other constraints, like writing and refreshing rows at a time, but combined with the difference in erase cycles causing wear in flash, you do end up with a significant difference in just how randomly you can access these memories.
  - tromp 4y ago
    SRAM is the only type of memory offering true random access. DRAM can suffer so much on pure random access that completely rewriting your algorithm to have mostly sequential access to 20x more memory still ends up 4x faster (lean miner vs mean miner in [1]). [1] https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo https://github.com/tromp/cuckoo
  - account42 4y ago
    Well as long as we are nitpicking: random access does not say anything about the block size - you're not going to be writing individual random bits whith any kind of memory. And random access also does not say that all blocks have the same access time, only that the time does not depend on what you have accessed previously. In conclusion, an array of spinning rust drives is random access memory.
omgmajk 4y ago
My mother calls the entire computer "hard drive", leftover from old newspapers in the 90'ies.
- soylentcola 4y ago
  Yep. Most faculty/staff where I work either call a desktop computer a "hard drive" or a "CPU".