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Main Memory: The Winners

Early integrated circuit (IC) memory

This Semiconductor Advanced Memory (SAM) contains 16 64-bit memory chips. The technology failed due to difficulties in attaching individual chips.

Main Memory: The Winners

There were reliable forms of memory. And cheap ones. There were random access devices and fast, electronic memory. But not until the early 1950s did all those qualities come together.

Two memory breakthroughs transformed computers from laboratory equipment to household tools: Magnetic core memory, which reigned supreme after 1953; and semiconductor memory, today’s technology, which became dominant around 1980.

Magnetic core memory

Cores from the MIT Whirlwind computer.

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