Research Assignment  

Milestone of memory growth:

Name Year Size Type Usage

Punch cards 1890 .08KB Card looms and piano

Magnetic Drum 1932 48KB Magnet Primary storage

device

Williams-Kilburn 1947 .128KB Tube Stored data by

Tube displaying a grid of
dots on cathode
ray tubes
Magnetic Tape 1951 231KB Motor Wind the magnetic
Drive tape from reel to
reel, while passing
a tape head to
read, write, or
erase data.
Magnetic Core 1951 2KB Magnetic Ring Storing one bit of
data on tiny
magnetic rings, or
cores.
Hard Disk Drive 1956 3750KB to Magnetic rotating HDD stores data on
Terabytes metal platters, or one or more
disks rapidly rotating
magnetic metal
platters, or disks.
Solid State Drive 1950 Up to 16 Terabytes Non rotating Only 2.5 inches can
magnetic disk hold memory.

References

1. Abramovitch, Daniel & Franklin, Gene. (2002). A brief history of disk drive control. Control
Systems, IEEE. 22. 28 - 42. 10.1109/MCS.2002.1003997.
2. http://www.computerhistory.org/timeline/memory-storage/
3. https://www.zetta.net/about/blog/history-data-storage-technology
4. http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/memory-storage/8/253
5. https://www.sandisk.com/about/company/history
Exercises (6, 7)
6.
a. Job A 625K does not fit into Block 1 and so gets Block 2 900K.

Job B gets Block 3 280K. Because Job B 44K arrives, it does not Block 1 250K because the
next-fit system chooses the next block after the one most recently allocated Block 2.

Job C cannot be as Block 2 has already been allocated to Job A. At this point, the last
allocated job is Block 3 so the next incoming job,

Job D is allocated to the next block that is large enough to hold it, Block 1 250K.
Later, when Job A is done, Block 2 can be allocated to the waiting Job C.

b. This allocation scheme helps processing time efficient but does not reduce fragmentation. It
allocate the blocks at the bottom of the list more often that first-fit or best-fit.

7.
a. Job A will be allocated to the biggest available block, Block 2.
Then Job B will get the biggest available block, Block 5.
Job C need to wait until a block that is large enough (Blocks 2 or 5) becomes available.
Job D will be allocated Block 3 because it is the largest one available of the five blocks.

b. The worst-fit memory allocation scheme lends itself to internal fragmentation because the
blocks allocated to the incoming jobs can be much larger than necessary, causing wasted
space within the block (internal fragmentation) and not between blocks.