Cache memory
This chapter addresses the problem of how we can increase the speed of access to the main memory without simply making the main memory from RAM chips having a shorter access time. A main memory made from fast RAM chips would be financially expensive, take up a lot of board space, and consume a large amount of energy. We shall see that a very substantial increase in access speed can be achieved by the use of a relatively small, but fast, additional memory, called a cache.
15.1 Basic operation of cache
The locality of reference properties of a program, discussed in Chapter 14, suggests that, over short periods, only the currently active clusters of instruction code and data need to be made available to the microprocessor. We will ...
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