Categories: PCs and Hardware Glossaries Solutions: Printer Memory Versus System Memory Memory's Too Fast? L2 Cache Specifications How Computers Use Memory More Hardware Solutions

As the need for faster access to DRAM has increased, technologies have been developed to provide it. One such technology is known as bursting, in which large blocks of data are sent and processed in the form of an uninterrupted "burst" of smaller units. What this means to DRAM is that the burst carries details not only about the address of the first page, but also of the next few. BEDO RAM can handle four data elements in one burst, and this allows the final three elements to avoid experiencing the delays of the first--all the addresses are ready to be processed. The DRAM is given the first address, and then can process the rest at a rate of 10 ns each. BEDO RAM, however, despite its substantial speed increase, still has difficulty moving past the 66-MHz bus barrier. BEDO RAM exists because SDRAM manufacturers were uninterested in pricing SDRAM to be competitive with EDO RAM; as a result, more work was done with EDO to add bursting technologies for speed rivaling that of SDRAM. Hence BEDO RAM.

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Published as Tutor in the 10/21/97 issue of PC Magazine.