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> but still called hard drive space "memory".

Well, it is secondary memory. Besides, absolutely, it is memory. It's just not the main memory in a relative context about your computer.

In fact, "storage" and "memory" mean about the same thing. And since it's not technically the main or primary memory of our computers anymore, and RAM is actually an implementation detail that all of the in-machine memory shares, I'm not sure I have a good pedantic name for it.




> RAM is actually an implementation detail that all of the in-machine memory shares

Nope. A pagefile is random-access memory backed by your sequential-access hard drive (or, hey, maybe your random-access SSD) instead of your "RAM".


I mean... My computer has a device called RAM that communicates with the north bridge by a protocol where sequential readings have lower latency than random ones. It also has a device called disk (or sometimes drive), that has nothing shaped like a disk (and is never loaded), and communicates with the north bridge by a protocol where sequential readings have lower latency than random ones.

At the CPU side, there is an in-package device that communicates with the memory controller by a protocol where sequential readings have lower latency than random ones. It communicates with an in-die device, that finally communicates with the CPU with a protocol that provides random access. That last one is obviously not called "RAM".




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