Chip RAM

Chip RAM is the name given to RAM with dual port access in the Amiga computer that could be accessed by the custom chipset as well as the CPU.

The custom chipset was able to perform DMA transfers to and from this RAM, and would even lock-out the CPU while doing so.

By default, most Amiga computers only came with chip RAM, but could be expanded with RAM that only the CPU could access, even when the custom chipset was busy with chip RAM. This caused a big speed increase to most programs, and was thus nicknamed "Fast RAM".