Monday, 6 April 2009

Lucky number seven

A computer contains a (surprisingly small) number of interconnected main components. Main ones:
  • CPU or chip
  • RAM or main memory
  • Hard drive or other bulk storage
  • Buses, the wiring between these components
All of them need to operate at a similar level. It's pointless having a super-fast chip when your memory can only input and output data very slowly. And vice versa. And that pretty much applies to the cartesian product of all four of these components (i.e. how each interacts with each other).

Well, I've come to the conclusion that I have some kind of mismatch between the components of my brain. My thoughts sometimes go so fast that there's no way to store them, and I sort of lose them halfway. Apparently our RAM is pretty small, or rather, contains a small number of discrete storage areas, seven being the classic number. It may be that this is the bottleneck, that because I need to keep track of more than this number of things, that suddenly the whole idea just kind of collapses.

I don't know. Anyway, what was I doing?

3 comments:

Itamar said...

You were commenting on your post about texts.

Nadia said...

I was reading about brains the other day (as that is how my form of procrastination manifests) - according to neuroscientist Dr. Michael Turvey, the human brain has the potential capacity to store 10,000 years worth of memories.

sidlid said...

Hmm, easy to say, hard to refute. Great science!