Unit 6 Analysis: Memory Cost
Chris Orr
Introduction to Computers
Mr. Swope
March 1, 2014
Unit 6 Analysis 1: Memory Cost Throughout the years prices of computers have dropped and the memory in the computers has gotten substantially higher. Moore’s Law tells us that the number of processors doubles every two years. Well this is causing technology or computers in this case to basically double as well. In 1957 a 0.00098 KB RAM cost $392. This is unbelievable to me considering today my phone has two-billion times the RAM. In 1955 the amount of ROM on an IBM hard-drive was 12 MB and cost a whopping $74800 or the price of a decent house today. This price was at $6233 per MB. In today’s world we forget sometimes that there were even computers with MB hard drives. In 1981, an 18 MB hard drive cost $2500. This is $00.000132 per byte, which doesn’t seem like a lot when you look at it that way but what is anyone going to do with 1 byte of memory. Today a 1 TB hard drives cost way less than in 1981, only $150. This is $00.00000000358 per byte. In 1990 RAM costs were $50 per MB. At this cost it was $00.0047 per byte. Again doesn’t seem like much but the memory capacity could barely run anything. I mean there really wasn’t a whole lot I could do on my computer in high school that I didn’t have to start first and wait an hour for a two minute movie to load. That was in 2000 by the way. Today 2 GB of RAM cost just a mere $50, which is $00.00000000000174. This is nothing.
All computers today have GB or TB. I was just in Wal-Mart today and saw a removable hard-drive with a 2TB capacity for only $150, and there was even a 3TB hard-drive. When I went over to staples and looked at all the computers I didn’t see any fewer than 750 GB of ROM and 4 GB of RAM. With technology in the world today expanding so quickly it is not farfetched to see hard-drives with 100 TB capacities in the near future. If you went by Moore’s Law, which I know is for transistors but I think goes along with many other things, I
Introduction to Computers
Mr. Swope
March 1, 2014
Unit 6 Analysis 1: Memory Cost Throughout the years prices of computers have dropped and the memory in the computers has gotten substantially higher. Moore’s Law tells us that the number of processors doubles every two years. Well this is causing technology or computers in this case to basically double as well. In 1957 a 0.00098 KB RAM cost $392. This is unbelievable to me considering today my phone has two-billion times the RAM. In 1955 the amount of ROM on an IBM hard-drive was 12 MB and cost a whopping $74800 or the price of a decent house today. This price was at $6233 per MB. In today’s world we forget sometimes that there were even computers with MB hard drives. In 1981, an 18 MB hard drive cost $2500. This is $00.000132 per byte, which doesn’t seem like a lot when you look at it that way but what is anyone going to do with 1 byte of memory. Today a 1 TB hard drives cost way less than in 1981, only $150. This is $00.00000000358 per byte. In 1990 RAM costs were $50 per MB. At this cost it was $00.0047 per byte. Again doesn’t seem like much but the memory capacity could barely run anything. I mean there really wasn’t a whole lot I could do on my computer in high school that I didn’t have to start first and wait an hour for a two minute movie to load. That was in 2000 by the way. Today 2 GB of RAM cost just a mere $50, which is $00.00000000000174. This is nothing.
All computers today have GB or TB. I was just in Wal-Mart today and saw a removable hard-drive with a 2TB capacity for only $150, and there was even a 3TB hard-drive. When I went over to staples and looked at all the computers I didn’t see any fewer than 750 GB of ROM and 4 GB of RAM. With technology in the world today expanding so quickly it is not farfetched to see hard-drives with 100 TB capacities in the near future. If you went by Moore’s Law, which I know is for transistors but I think goes along with many other things, I