Characteristics of main and peripheral memory

Question

Explain few characteristics of the main and the peripheral memory.

Answer 1

Main memory:

Main memory refers to an integral part of the system hardware and is generally very fast in the sense information can also be stored and retrieved from it rapidly.

Peripheral memory:

Peripheral memory also known as auxillary memory is generally add-on memory having very large storing capacity however slower than the main memory. It often serves as the data memory to store very large quantities of the data known as the mass storage. Users generally store the program and data within the peripheral memory, the computer access the program and its related data stored within the main memory temporarily however it executes the program, and then stores results back into the peripheral memory.