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The main memory of the computer is also known as RAM, standing for Random Access Memory. It is constructed from integrated circuits and needs to have electrical power in order to maintain its information. When power is lost, the information is lost too! It can be directly accessed by the CPU. The access time to read or write any particular byte are independent of whereabouts in the memory that byte is, and currently is approximately 50 nanoseconds (a thousand millionth of a second). This is broadly comparable with the speed at which the CPU will need to access data. Main memory is expensive compared to external memory so it has limited capacity. The capacity available for a given price is increasing all the time. For example many home Personal Computers now have a capacity of 16 megabytes (million bytes), while 64 megabytes is commonplace on commercial workstations. The CPU will normally transfer data to and from the main memory in groups of two, four or eight bytes, even if the operation it is undertaking only requires a single byte.