the HELL OF CACHES

table of contents

Purpose of this document:

The goal of this document is to provide students in CMSC411 (computer architecture) with a brief but thorough introduction to the basics of caching as presented in first half of chapter 5 in Hennessey and Patterson's COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE: A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH.


Format:

This document is presented in the style of a short hypertext FAQ list. FAQ is an acronym for the words, "Frequently Asked Questions." FAQs are widely used in online discussion groups (newsgroups, web-hosted discussions and so on), as technical support documents ("common questions") and so on. A wealth of information is available online in the form of FAQs, particularly for computing topics. Many of the FAQ sections are accompanied by exercises to illustrate the point. Students in computer science should be familiar with FAQs as sources of online information.

Answers to specific questions are available simply by jumping directly to the desired question, but the list is ordered by topic and the questions can be read sequentially as a quick tutorial. This document is not a substitute for the textbook material.

SECTIONS:

I
I. Nontechnical & Philosophical issues (the Whys)

II
II. The Three Cache Types

III
III. Cache Management Issues

IV
IV. Ways to Improve Cache Performance



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body text Copyright 1997 Robert Rodgers graphics images Copyright 1997 Robert Rodgers HTML code copyright 1997 Elizabeth Rodgers and Robert Rodgers. The tables in section IV were derived from several graphs and tables in Hennessey and Patterson's COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE: A QUANTITATIVE APPROACH. Permission is granted to provide these pages in their original, unaltered form online for educational purposes. They may not be republished or included on a CDROM, disk or other media or with any published work without the express permission of the copyright holders (this includes FAQ books).