ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the price and performance of processors, memory, and storage. The incredible improvement in performance of computers over time has meant that the price-performance trade-off normally improves dramatically even in a short period. The capacity and cost of memory, and the capacity and cost of magnetic disk drives are also critical. Price is often quoted in a specific currency. In global markets, changing currencies can affect pricing of components and products. Applications normally change with time, as customers demand new features. Adding new features expands the size and usually slows the speed of the application. Computers have used a variety of technologies: mechanics, electrical relays, vacuum tubes, electrostatics, transistors, integrated circuits, magnetic recording, and lasers. Changing technologies have allowed improved price-performance, resulting in faster speed, larger memories, smaller physical size, and lower cost. The memory hierarchy includes the registers internal to the processor, various levels of cache memory, the main memory, virtual memory, disk drives, and tape.
