Computing · 1970

DRAM

One transistor and one capacitor per bit.

Robert Dennard at IBM invented the one-transistor DRAM cell in 1966, and Intel's 1103 of 1970 held 1 kilobit. It overtook core memory by 1972; a single DRAM chip now holds over 16 billion bits.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

MOSFET 1959
Integrated circuit 1958

What it led to 3

Personal computer 1977
Flash memory 1987
High Bandwidth Memory 2013

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Cost of memory and storage Latest: Memory: 1.09k $/TB (2023) Source: Our World in Data

Transistors per microprocessor Latest: 58.2B transistors (2021) Source: Our World in Data