One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling discovery about the relationship between time and memory in computing.

“Imagine a computation that produces a new bit of information in every step, based on the bits that it has computed so far. Over t steps of time, it may generate up to t new bits of information in ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. One July afternoon in 2024, Ryan Williams set out to prove himself wrong. Two months had passed since he’d hit upon a startling ...

Adrian Ward had been driving confidently around Austin, Texas, for nine years — until last November, when he started getting lost. Ward’s phone had been acting up, and Apple Maps had stopped working.

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. “Obviously” is a dangerous word, even in scenarios that seem simple. Suppose, for instance, you need to do an important computation. You ...

The result: prices for the latest generation of computer memory, DDR5, have skyrocketed. Data from PCPartPicker suggest the price of computer memory has quadrupled in the past six months – spiking ...

There’s only so much RAM to go around, and with data centers seen as the priority, smartphone and laptop makers may have to raise prices to compete. The stock prices of RAM and NAND manufacturers ...

Your memory relies on reusing, overlapping and adapting rather than on a fixed number of storage spots. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it ...

The AI boom is driving a shortage of computer memory chips, which will lead to higher prices for PCs and smartphones in 2026.