On today’s menu: alphabet soup. The future of your Mac, MacBook, iPhone, or iPad is tied to the future of RAM, CPU, DRAM, NVM, NAND, SSD, V-NAND, CTF, RRAM, ReRAM, GMR, MRAM, OST-MRAM, PCM, and WTF. Just kidding about that last one, but trust me, this is all interesting stuff. For geeks, that is.
Of that laundry list, you already know what RAM is: the random access memory in your computer, smartphone, or tablet where the central processing unit (CPU) stashes the information it’s working on when it receives an email, runs a Photoshop filter, or slingshots an angry bird at a piggie. DRAM is dynamic RAM—essentially a bunch of capacitors that store the 1s and 0s that make computing devices tick. DRAM is fast and efficient, but it needs…