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In the last lecture we discussed logic gates and binary system. We discussed flip flops and a lot of types. Now I'm confused about memory structure, it is a billions of flip flops gates that stores billions of 0s and 1s, or what? How exactly the memory stores bits?

Trenton McKinney
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hussein khalil
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    Please read [ask]. Stackoverflow is for programming questions. General understanding questions like yours can be better answered with a text book, on wikipedia, or with a web search. – Robert Oct 05 '19 at 19:50
  • Welcome to Stack Overflow. Please read about [asking questions](https://stackoverflow.com/help/asking). When asking a question context is important; that first sentence about last lecture is very confusing out of context. – Jason Aller Oct 05 '19 at 23:38

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Probably the best place to learn about this is the classic What every programmer should know about memory, that is still discussed as good source.

But long story short yes, it's like billions of gates. It seems overwhelming (and it is), but the modularization - in itself a great concept - allows you to think in levels of cells, then rows, then other abstractions, so a high-level developer don't need to know about this in order to get software working. For the hardware designer it is equally important: you build a component, abstract it, build a higher level component, and so on.

pr3
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    Yes, Ulrich Drepper's article is still a good description of DRAM (and cache SRAM). But no, DRAM isn't billions of *gates*, it's billions of *capacitors* with a grid of row/column lines driven by transistors. (e.g. reading involves a "sense amplifier".) That's *why* it's *dynamic* and needs to be refreshed frequently. – Peter Cordes Oct 05 '19 at 16:37