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To demonstrate why memory is to used to make a computer, I
will use a very simple example of two students who are currently going
to high school. We will use John and Jessica as the names for the two
students. Since both
of the students have many textbooks and notebooks, they are assigned a locker in
which they can
store their books and equipment. It would just be too hard to haul all
of their books to every one of their classes, as well as to their homes.
John is very lazy, and never plans ahead. He never comes to any of his
classes prepared. Whenever his teacher switches the subject within the
period, John is forced to go to his locker and bring the required equipment.
When he is at his locker, instead of bringing everything he will need for the
rest of the class, he only brings what he will need the current part of the class.
This wastes much of his time throughout the day, because he constantly has to make
trips to his locker, which by the way, is on the other side of the school.
Sometimes, he even has to go home to get some of his things, which wastes even
more time. If only John could be more like Jessica, he would get things
done faster, and save the energy of making hundreds of trips a week to his
locker.
Jessica, on the other hand, plans ahead. When she goes
to her classes, she takes everything she needs for her class. This way, when the
teacher switches the subject, all Jessica has to do is pull the required
equipment out of her desk, and she is all ready to go. When the period
ends, she makes a short trip to her locker. She unloads all of her things from
the last period, takes everything she needs for the next period, and she is all
set.
Although John and Jessica are not computers, this example
shows the advantages of having temporary memory. The computer stores data
it accesses the most in the memory, so that the computer runs faster.
If it had to take things out of the hard drive every time it performed an
operation, operations would take a very long time to complete, and much of the
time would be wasted. John would represent a computer with no memory, while Jessica would represent a computer with
a sufficient amount of memory.
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