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Diagram of a CPU memory cache operation. In computing, a cache (/ k æ ʃ / ⓘ KASH) [1] is a hardware or software component that stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster; the data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation or a copy of data stored elsewhere.
Set-associative cache is a trade-off between direct-mapped cache and fully associative cache. A set-associative cache can be imagined as a n × m matrix. The cache is divided into ‘n’ sets and each set contains ‘m’ cache lines. A memory block is first mapped onto a set and then placed into any cache line of the set.
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.
A translation lookaside buffer (TLB) is a memory cache that stores the recent translations of virtual memory to physical memory. It is used to reduce the time taken to access a user memory location. [1] It can be called an address-translation cache. It is a part of the chip's memory-management unit (MMU).
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.
The gap between processor speed and main memory speed has grown exponentially. Until 2001–05, CPU speed, as measured by clock frequency, grew annually by 55%, whereas memory speed only grew by 7%. [1] This problem is known as the memory wall. The motivation for a cache and its hierarchy is to bridge this speed gap and overcome the memory wall.
Memory is broken into blocks of objects each. A load or a store between main memory and a CPU register may now be serviced from the cache. If a load or a store cannot be serviced from the cache, it is called a cache miss. A cache miss results in one block being loaded from the main memory into the cache.
The number of levels in the memory hierarchy and the performance at each level has increased over time. The type of memory or storage components also change historically. [6] For example, the memory hierarchy of an Intel Haswell Mobile [7] processor circa 2013 is: Processor registers – the fastest possible access (usually 1 CPU cycle). A few ...