dataminne

Dataminne is a Swedish computing term that refers to the portion of a computer's memory that is used to store data, as distinct from the code that defines a program. In Swedish-language education and documentation, dataminne is commonly equated with data memory in computer architecture and with the data segment of a running process.

Its scope typically includes the regions of memory that hold initialized and uninitialized data (often called the data segment and the BSS segment in many programming environments), as well as dynamically allocated data stored on the heap. The term is usually contrasted with programminne, or program memory, which stores executable code, and with non-volatile storage used for long-term data retention.

In a process memory layout, the code, or text, resides in program memory, while the data memory contains variables and other data the program manipulates. The stack holds temporary data such as function call frames, and the heap holds dynamically allocated data; together they all participate in the system’s dataminne upon program execution. In embedded systems, dataminne often refers specifically to RAM, the volatile memory that is erased when power is removed, though some contexts broaden the term to include both RAM and RAM-like data areas.

Historically, the concept reflects the von Neumann architecture idea of separating data and instructions, with many modern systems maintaining some separation in hardware (as in Harvard-like designs) but commonly exposing a unified dataminne for software.

See also memory, data segment, RAM, ROM, data storage.