Operating System Storage Hierarchy And Types of Memory.
Why do we Need storage devices? After reading a lot of Research papers, I have found something interesting.....
Nowadays, we all are using smartphones and computers to communicate with others locally as well as globally. Mostly every day in a year we keep doing something on the internet that is related to Entertainment, Studies, Gaming, Chatting with friends, etc.
Have we ever thought that how all these doing our job very efficiently for us and how they keep a huge amount of data securely? As we know there are billions of people using the internet and the data is stored in memory devices like in Hard disk storage, cloud storage, or any online storage.
But can we imagine how can we live without these storage devices, how to keep the data safe and secure without these technologies? Yes, it's not possible where we live because without storage we can't do anything in this digital world. From the basic smartphone to scientific Laptop, the data of all the digital devices are stored in a Memory chip or Storage Device.
The most commonly secondary storage device is a Magnetic Disk, which provides storage for both programs and data. Each storage system provides the basic functions of storing a datum and holding that datum until it retrieved at a later time. The main differences among the various storage system lie in speed, cost, size, volatility and quality.
The wide variety of storage systems can be organised in a hierarchy according to speed and cost. The higher-level are expensive but they are fast as we move down the hierarchy the cost per bit generally decreases, whereas the access time generally increases. In addition to the differing in speed and cost, the various storage system are either volatile or non volatile. Volatile storage losses its contents when the power to the device is removed, So data must be written to non-volatile Storage for safe keeping.
Key components of storage devices...
- Registers
- Cache Memory,
- Main Memory,
- Magnetic Disk,
- Optical Disk,
- Magnetic Tape
Registers:
My some Research on Registers :
As we know that memory is stored data in chunks in different locations of memory depending upon the size of the data. If the stored data are big it needs a very big storage capacity to hold on the data into the storage devices. So there is rising the main problem is how to fetch the correct data in the less amount of time.Time Management and data accuracy is the main issue ever. Suppose we have hundreds of gigabyte data and every time we need fresh and latest data for our research work to find out the population of the country. So that time we request the CPU manager to gather the information that we needed and the same process is run continuously till we finished our research work.
So if we examine these case study very deeply we could find out that "Time Management and resource allocation" is never idle during the execution time. The overall process is managed by " CPU management, process management, memory management, resource management". The memory management task is done by the CPU very efficiently through the Registers, cache memory, and main memory.
Registers are the high-speed data storage components or technology that are built to reduce the data access time from the secondary storage device.
It holds a small amount of data around 32 bits to 62 bits and may hold instructions. Registers technology had come after the inlet first generations silicon chips. The Registers are inbuilt into the processor and the size of the Registers depends on the type of processor we are using.
As normal people, we think that RAM is the very fastest memory in the CPU and even most people are following this statement but as computer technicians or computer programmers, we know that there is already something that more fastest then the RAM. So always remember that RAM comes on the second level and then the REGISTER comes on the first level. Registers are very smoothly and fastly retrieve the data because they are very close to the processor and machine.
So after taking the proper knowledge about the Resisters, we can understand REGISTERS is much important for CPU. But note that we can't increase the size of the Register as we do in hard disks because Registers are inbuilt within the processor and if we wanna change the size of the Registers so we will need to change the whole processor.
"Example- Suppose if I'm using Intel i3 processor and their Registers size is just only 1 MB but after upgrading that processor from Intel i3 to Intel i7 processor, that time the Register is automatically taking updation with new features and Register sizes.
Cache or cache Memory :
The Cache memory is very useful to fetch the data, files, and other information from the secondary storage device very quickly. The cache is an Intermediator between the CPU and the ram. Suppose we had made an excel file from our computer system one week ago. Now, after one week, when we again rewrite our excel file it takes a long response time to fetch the information about my excel file.
It is so much time-wasting work and sometimes it hangs your system. In this situation, the role of Cache Memory is coming. Suppose you are working on a Microsoft Excel sheet and after finishing your work you have closed it, then when you reopen your Microsoft Excel software it will take less time to reload and show the content as well as some information will be saved in cache memory to give you a better experience in future.
But cache memory has some limitations, suppose if the power supply is cut randomly or you have shut off the system in both cases the cache memory will automatically be deleted. Note that cache memory comes in every computer or smartphone to give better performance but the cache size is limited similar to Registers size, it may be in some MBs. A cache is lying on the second level of Hierarchy which is close to the machine but not same as Registers are there.
Main Memory :
The main memory is our RAM "RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY ", which is also a temporary memory. We need this memory to do any work on our computer, this memory store the data until the computer will shut off. This type of memory is used to read the data from the computer, it is very fast than the secondary storage device but less to the Registers and Cache memory.
If we use the higher capacity ram it will definitely increase the computation performance of the CPU. Main memory couldn't store the data in a long time, it is bound with some limitations. It helps the CPU to read and write the data in temporary storage that is know as Main Memory and it is volatile memory as per nature. Main memory has comes with different storage formats like 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, etc.
Magnetic Disk :
The Magnetic disk is a non-volatile storage method which is also called hard disk memory. We all are already familiar with hard disks or hard drives and the role that plays in the CPU. Well, the magnetic disk is not a removable device, it is stored within the CPU. A huge amount of users data are stored there. This functionality makes it very slow as compared to main memory or cache memory.