In this lesson we will discuss the characteristics of Memory devices.
Memory Chips
A memory chip is an electronic component (circuit) in which a program, data or both can be stored. Memory chip is a chip that holds programs and data either temporarily (RAM), permanently (ROM, PROM) or permanently until changed (EPROM, EEPROM, flash memory).
The program / data are stored in the memory chip in binary format of zeros and ones (bits). A bit can either be a zero or a one. These bits are gathered into groups for convenient addressing storage capacities. Sixteen bits are a "word", eight bits are a "byte" and four bits are a "nibble".
The most common term used is the byte, which contains 8 bits and can have, 2 to the power of 8 = 256 different values.
