Engadget Explains RAM vs. ROM as AI Data Centers Squeeze DRAM Supply

Everything opened on a device involves RAM. When a browser tab is opened, it is copied from storage into RAM so the processor can reach it in nanoseconds, Engadget said. DRAM dominates, storing each bit as a charge in a tiny capacitor refreshed thousands of times per second; without power, the charge and data disappear. DDR5 sticks are used in PCs, LPDDR is soldered into phones and thin laptops, and GDDR chips cluster around GPUs. Higher RAM capacity allows more apps, tabs and powerful games before the system swaps to slower storage.

Memory prices have become a central part of the story. Engadget cited TrendForce data showing conventional DRAM contract prices rose 90 to 95 percent quarter over quarter at the beginning of the year. AI data centers are absorbing nearly all supply as companies race to build them, including Nvidia’s plan to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI to build 10 gigawatts of AI data centers. That specific deal is stalled, Engadget said, but it illustrates what is driving prices to record highs and cutting supplies to regular consumers.

The supply crunch has already changed corporate plans. Micron announced it would end its Crucial consumer brand to focus more on high-margin AI data center demand, and Engadget reported it ceased operations in February. Engadget noted this is not the first memory shortage to hit consumers: Huawei blamed slower P10 devices on a memory shortage in 2017 after it quietly mixed faster and slower flash chips in the same phone model.

ROM’s name has also outlived its literal meaning. The earliest ROM chips had data physically built into circuitry, so changes required new silicon from the factory. Programmable ROM, or PROM, changed that in 1956. Its inventor, Wen Tsing Chow of American Bosch Arma, designed it so the U.S. Air Force could load targeting data into missile guidance computers by blowing microscopic fuses inside the chip. But a fuse can be blown only once, making every write permanent, including mistakes.

Intel engineer Dov Frohman developed EPROM in 1971 after investigating a reliability fault in another Intel product, Engadget said. Each EPROM had a small quartz window; shining ultraviolet light through it for a few minutes erased the chip for reprogramming. EEPROM later made erasure electrical. Fujio Masuoka of Toshiba pushed the idea further with flash memory, introduced as NOR flash in 1984 and followed by NAND flash in 1987. NAND is now found in every SSD, smartphone, memory card and USB drive on the market.

The firmware chip on a PC motherboard is still called the BIOS ROM, but it is actually a small flash chip rewritten during firmware updates, Engadget said. The same applies to phones: the ROM Xiaomi lists for the Redmi 13 is regular UFS or eMMC flash with system partitions locked to read-only. Proper ROM chips still appear in old plastic game cartridges, which is why files ripped from them for emulators are called ROMs. Factory-set ROM still exists, but Engadget said it is found mainly in the deepest depths of cheap electronics, in tiny microcontrollers running code that will never change.

RAM still means what it did six decades ago, while ROM has become shorthand for whatever memory a user is not supposed to touch, according to Engadget.