Cache memory

The cache is a small amount of high-speed memory, usually with a memory cycle time comparable to the time required by the CPU to fetch one instruction. The cache is usually filled from main memory when instructions or data are fetched into the CPU. Often the main memory will supply a wider data word to the cache than the CPU requires, to fill the cache more rapidly. The amount of information which is replaces at one time in the cache is called the line size for the cache. This is normally the width of the data bus between the cache memory and the main memory. A wide line size for the cache means that several instruction or data words are loaded into the cache at one time, providing a kind of prefetching for instructions or data. Since the cache is small, the effectiveness of the cache relies on the following properties of most programs:

Spatial locality -- most programs are highly sequential; the next instruction usually comes from the next memory location. Data is usually structured, and data in these structures normally are stored in contiguous memory locations.

Short loops are a common program structure, especially for the innermost sets of nested loops. This means that the same small set of instructions is used over and over. Generally, several operations are performed on the same data values, or variables.

When a cache is used, there must be some way in which the memory controller determines whether the value currently being addressed in memory is available from the cache. There are several ways that this can be accomplished. One possibility is to store both the address and the value from main memory in the cache, with the address stored in a type of memory called associative memory or, more descriptively, content addressable memory. An associative memory, or content addressable memory, has the property that when a value is presented to the memory, the address of the value is returned if the value is stored in the memory, otherwise an indication that the value is not in the associative memory is returned. All of the comparisons are done simultaneously, so the search is performed very quickly. This type of memory is very expensive, because each memory location must have both a comparator and a storage element. A cache memory can be implemented with a block of associative memory, together with a block of ``ordinary'' memory. The associative memory would hold the address of the

data stored in the cache, and the ordinary memory would contain the data at that address. Such a cache memory might be configured as shown in Figure .

Cache memory
The cache is a small amount of high-speed memory, usually with a memory cycle time comparable to the time required by the CPU to fetch one instruction. The cache is usually filled from main memory when instructions or data are fetched into the CPU. Often the main memory will supply a wider data word to the cache than the CPU requires, to fill the cache more rapidly. The amount of information which is replaces at one time in the cache is called the line size for the cache. This is normally the width of the data bus between the cache memory and the main memory. A wide line size for the cache means that several instruction or data words are loaded into the cache at one time, providing a kind of prefetching for instructions or data. Since the cache is small, the effectiveness of the cache relies on the following properties of most programs:

Spatial locality -- most programs are highly sequential; the next instruction usually comes from the next memory location. Data is usually structured, and data in these structures normally are stored in contiguous memory locations.

Short loops are a common program structure, especially for the innermost sets of nested loops. This means that the same small set of instructions is used over and over. Generally, several operations are performed on the same data values, or variables.

When a cache is used, there must be some way in which the memory controller determines whether the value currently being addressed in memory is available from the cache. There are several ways that this can be accomplished. One possibility is to store both the address and the value from main memory in the cache, with the address stored in a type of memory called associative memory or, more descriptively, content addressable memory. An associative memory, or content addressable memory, has the property that when a value is presented to the memory, the address of the value is returned if the value is stored in the memory, otherwise an indication that the value is not in the associative memory is returned. All of the comparisons are done simultaneously, so the search is performed very quickly. This type of memory is very expensive, because each

memory location must have both a comparator and a storage element. A cache memory can be implemented with a block of associative memory, together with a block of ``ordinary'' memory. The associative memory would hold the address of the data stored in the cache, and the ordinary memory would contain the data at that address.