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Memory hierarchy affects performance in computer architectural design, algorithm predictions, and lower level programming constructs involving locality of reference. Designing for high performance requires considering the restrictions of the memory hierarchy, i.e. the size and capabilities of each component.
Data locality is a typical memory reference feature of regular programs (though many irregular memory access patterns exist). It makes the hierarchical memory layout profitable. In computers, memory is divided into a hierarchy in order to speed up data accesses. The lower levels of the memory hierarchy tend to be slower, but larger.
A model, called Concurrent-AMAT (C-AMAT), is introduced for more accurate analysis of current memory systems. More information on C-AMAT can be found in the external links section. AMAT's three parameters hit time (or hit latency), miss rate, and miss penalty provide a quick analysis of memory systems. Hit latency (H) is the time to hit in the ...
Additionally, a memory management unit (MMU) is a small device between CPU and RAM recalculating the actual memory address, for example to provide an abstraction of virtual memory or other tasks. As the RAM types used for primary storage are volatile (uninitialized at start up), a computer containing only such storage would not have a source to ...
Cache hierarchy, or multi-level cache, is a memory architecture that uses a hierarchy of memory stores based on varying access speeds to cache data.Highly requested data is cached in high-speed access memory stores, allowing swifter access by central processing unit (CPU) cores.
If needed, contents of the computer memory can be transferred to storage; a common way of doing this is through a memory management technique called virtual memory. Modern computer memory is implemented as semiconductor memory, [5] [6] where data is stored within memory cells built from MOS transistors and other components on an integrated ...
A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. [1] A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, which stores copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations.
A drawback of an inclusive policy is that the unique memory capacity of the cache is determined by the lower level cache. Unlike the case of exclusive cache, where the unique memory capacity is the combined capacity of all caches in the hierarchy. [4]