Registers and RAM: Crash Course Computer Science

Today we’re going to create memory! Using the basic logic gates we discussed in episode 3 we can build a circuit that stores a single bit of information, and then through some clever scaling (and of course many new levels of abstraction) we’ll show you how we can construct the modern random-access memory, or RAM, found in our computers today. RAM is the working memory of a computer. It holds the information that is being executed by the computer and as such is a crucial component for a computer to operate. Next week we’ll use this RAM, and the ALU we made last episode, to help us construct our CPU - the heart of a computer. *CORRECTION* In our 16x16 Latch Matrix graphic, we inadvertently left off the horizontal row access line above the top row of latches. As a result, the highlighted line for the row at address 12 should actually be one line higher.