I know. I saw the bubble memory was used in the 70s and maybe even 80s, which is long after the days of core memory being becoming common.

And I know DRAM isn’t exactly simple.

But it just doesn’t feel as neat to me as pushing bubbles around or using a transducer to put a wave through mercury or other delay line. Or drawing a “picture of memory” for no one on a CRT because that _is_ your memory.

If one of those had won and was what everyone was used to, I’m probably think they were old hat and DRAM was crazy and cool. But that’s not how history worked out.

There is not that much complexity (circuit-wise) in the DRAM array itself apart from the fact that the sense amplifier is essentially an SRAM cell and not really an “amplifier”. Another layer of ridiculous complexity is how to interface that to the outside world without spending the precious die area of DRAM optimized process for complex interface logic or PHYs, so you get the only high-speed single ended parallel bus with weird voltage levels interface that is used in modern computers.