Part of the Microprocessors glossary:

In general, volatile (from the Latin "volatilis" meaning "to fly")is an adjective used to describe something unstable or changeable.

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In computers, volatile is used to describe memory content that is lost when the power is interrupted or switched off. Your computer's ordinary memory (or RAM ) is volatile memory.

Volatile memory contrasts with nonvolatile memory , memory that does not lose content when power is lost, that has a continuous source of power, or does not need to have its memory content periodically refreshed.

This was last updated in March 2008
Contributor(s): Tomas Malcanek
Posted by: Margaret Rouse

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