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Access Latency Versus Capacity in Storage Devices

Storage technologies trade access speed against how much they can hold, so faster storage is smaller and larger storage is slower to reach. A learner afterwards can compare two storage devices on both axes and explain why one is not simply better than the other.

Questions this Concept answers

Why is a processor register not simply a better storage device than a hard disk?

jeremy Text

Computer data storage

Computers do not have one kind of storage; they have a ladder of them. Registers and cache answer in fractions of a nanosecond but hold only a tiny amount, main memory is slower and bigger, and disks…