Memory is what the CPU shuffles through in order for the software to accomplish anything. The CPU never looks directly at the information on your floppy disk or your hard drive. This information is copied into memory by one of the traffic cops on the motherboard. The CPU then reads this information from the memory and acts on it. Random Access Memory (RAM) is called by this name because the CPU can get information from any location in the memory in much less than a millionth of a second. (more...)