SIMM

Acronym for Single In-line Memory Module. A SIMM is basically a group of memory chips soldered to a small circuit board designed for easy installation into computer equipment. These were created to provide some standardization and ease of user installation for upgradable computers in recent years. The technology was adopted by musical equipment manufacturers in the 1990’s and now almost all samplers use some kind of standardized memory upgrades (quite often SIMMs). This provides a more economical means of upgrading memory. SIMMs are available in different configurations: There are 30 pin and 72 pin versions, each available in a wide range of memory capacities ranging from 128K all the way up to 128 MB. There are other more subtle differences between SIMMs too. Composite versus non-composite arrangements, parity, and many other minor circuit configuration issues can cause SIMMs to fail to work properly in some equipment. To say that SIMMs are “standardized” is a very loose use of the word. Nevertheless, this technology and its scale of economy has helped to bring the price of memory down by several hundred percent in just a few years.