BINARY TREES used for data stored in internal memory

Question

the binary trees generally favors data stored in internal memory. why do they favor internal memory retrieval??? And why can't we use them for retrieval of external information???

Answer 1

Because round trips to external memory is expensive and we want to retrieve larger blocks than a binary tree node. Data structures like B-Tree are specifically designed to serve that purpose. Random access to internal memory, however, is not that expensive and binary trees would be fast and simple enough.

Answer 2

I would second with Li, the cost of retrieval is alot to bear, also it depends upon the requirement. If you require constant gets don't go for external source. However if you only want to dump data external memory is what you should look for.

Answer 3

External memory is slower and generally larger compared to the smaller faster internal memory. With that in mind, binary trees are space efficient and have a relatively good access time(depends o the operation).