MAIN » ARTICLES Defining Important Dates (SDRAM) Important dates? The day you were born, your birthday every year after that? Christmas Day? The first day of Ramadan, or when the Flyers won the Eastern Conference 2-1 over the Rangers? No. Important dates are simply days of importance or days that nobody remembers. or something entirely different that I will come to later on. If I were David Randall, what would I consider to be an important date? I think it might be something to do with triumphing over conventional beliefs by consuming more burgers in one sitting than ever before, or perhaps receiving a delivery of SDRAM, because as we all know – there is nothing quite like SDRAM: SDRAM, or as I know David likes to refer to it, Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory, is an absolute miracle of modern technology, and I believe the date it was invented is truly an ‘Important Date’. So how did SDRAM evolve? We asked a spokesperson from Memory Giants, Crucial to tell us all about it. “It went something like this. First there was fire, then the wheel and then we invented DRAM. OK, maybe we left out a few things.” “That’s nice” “"Modern" DRAM technology really started with fast page mode (FPM). When it was first introduced in the late 80's, FPM emerged as an improved version of page mode, which is now basically extinct. You'll see this type of progression throughout DRAM technology. Most new products are evolutionary in nature as opposed to revolutionary” “So just how fast is “fast page mode”!?” “Well, I’m glad you asked. FPM is capable of processing commands in as fast as 50 nanoseconds (that's 50 billionths of a second to you and me) and only a few years ago it was considered standard among desktop computers.” “50 nanoseconds! Isn't that fast enough?” “Actually 50 nanoseconds is an eternity to your computer. In fact, it's so "slow" that FPM (which processes commands in 50 nanoseconds) really isn't used on any new PCs anymore. Almost all new PCs currently use the much faster synchronous DRAM (SDRAM)” “Ah, SDRAM, that’s pretty nice isn’t it” “Yes, it is” Article Written by Jay