Kingston Technology Corporation

The Ultimate Memory Guide

A Closer Look

In this section you'll find more information on where memory comes from and where it goes in the computer.

Where memory comes from

As mentioned in the introduction, DRAM is the most common type of memory chip. These chips are produced in very large, highly specialized fabrication plants. From there, the chips go to memory module manufacturers (like Kingston) where they're used to make different memory products. These products find their way through various distribution channels to people who install them in computers.
Fabrication Memory Module Distributors/ End Users and Plant Manufacturer Resellers Computers

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Where memory goes in the computer

For memory modules to do their job, they must be in direct communication with the computer's CPU. It used to be that memory was always soldered directly onto the computer's system board (also known as logic board or motherboard). But as memory requirements increased, it became infeasible to solder all the memory chips onto the system board.

This is how SIMMs and SIMM sockets became popular. The SIMM format offers a flexible method of upgrading memory while using less space on the system board.

. . . . . . . . . Horizontal DRAM configuration on a system board

Vertical DRAM configuration in SIMMs . . . . . . . . . . . .

Memory installed on a typical computer system board might look like this:

In this example, the system board has 4 megabytes of memory
soldered onto the system board. It also has four SIMM sockets
for memory expansion, two of which contain SIMMs.

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Memory banks and bank schemas

Computers have memory arranged in what are called memory banks. The number of memory banks and their specific configurations vary from one computer to another because they're determined by the computer's CPU and how it receives information. The needs of the CPU determine the number of memory sockets required in a bank.

While we can't look at every possible memory configuration, we can look at a system for depicting memory configuration requirements called the bank schema. A bank schema is a diagram of rows and columns that shows the number of memory sockets in a system. This visual display is a theoretical bank layout and not an actual system board layout; it is designed to help you quickly determine the configuration requirements when adding memory modules. Kingston uses the bank schema system to help customers easily understand the configuration rules of various computer systems. The bank schema system appears in Kingston's product documentation, which includes the Kingston Product Manual (a hard copy reference) and an electronic reference system called KEPLER.

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