What is cache memory? How it works?

                         The computer has a number of different hardware's and tools and each of them has its own specific feature. Cache Memory is just one of them and it is a type of volatile memory. Cache memory is used to speed up the performance of the computer system.
                         Computer works on the data and computer read/access the data from storage disk to process it then produce and display the output to the user. But the most time-consuming task of the computer is to read/access the data from the computer memory. To minimize the time required to access the data from computer hard drive RAM (Click here to learn more about what is RAM) has been designed in the computer, but accessing the data from RAM is also a time-consuming process. To increase the data access speed cache memory has been developed.
                         All the computer programs are installed in the hard disk of the computer and all type of tasks and operations are performed on the processor [CPU (Central Processing Unit)]. But the speed of the hard disk is too slow to be accessed by the processor to perform various operations, this may lead the computer to work slower even if it has powerful CPU/processor.

Whenever programmer mention the CPU it means computer processor. Here I mentioned CPU instead of processor.

                         If any task is given to the CPU, it needed some data but directly accessing the data from HDD is time-consuming hence whenever user run any program, all required files are copied into the RAM (memory). RAM is faster than HDD but it is too slow to read the data directly from the RAM. To speed up the program execution some common and repeatedly used data is copied into the cache memory which is faster than RAM and HDD. CPU can directly access the data from the cache memory since cache memory can process the data at the speed of the CPU (almost). Hence whenever CPU require any type of data it first checks into the Cache memory if CPU does not find the data in cache memory then it finds the data in memory (RAM). If CPU require any file, it looks for the particular file in the cache memory if CPU find the required file in cache memory it is termed as a cache hit otherwise cache miss.

Intel just launched the Optane memory technology click here to learn more about optane memory technology.

                         To learn more about how cache memory can speed up the processing of the computer read the post what is a dll file in windows.



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