CacheLinie

CacheLinie is the basic unit of data exchange in a processor’s cache memory, representing a contiguous block of memory that is moved between main memory and the cache. In modern CPUs, caches are organized into multiple lines to exploit spatial locality, with line sizes commonly ranging from 32 to 128 bytes. The exact size is architecture-dependent and can influence cache hit rates and memory bandwidth.

Each CacheLinie carries not only the data payload but also metadata used by the cache system. This typically includes a tag to identify the memory address, a valid bit to indicate whether the line contains valid data, and a dirty bit to mark whether the line has been modified since it was loaded. In multi-level caches, lines are placed within a cache set based on a mapping function; most caches are set-associative, meaning each line can reside in one of several places within a set. When a new line must be loaded and all sets are full, a replacement policy (such as LRU or pseudo-LRU) determines which existing line is evicted.

Access to data follows a miss-or-hit flow. On a cache miss, the line containing the requested address is fetched from a lower level of the memory hierarchy and stored in a CacheLinie in the higher level. In multi-core systems, caches cooperate through a coherence protocol (for example MESI) to ensure consistency of data shared across cores. The concept of CacheLinie is closely related to, and often used interchangeably with, the English term cache line.

Performance considerations include the impact of line size on spatial locality, cache pollution, false sharing, and line bouncing in multi-core environments. Understanding CacheLinie is essential for optimizing memory access patterns and cache-aware software design.