Cacheplassen

Cacheplassen, translated as the cache place, is a term found in Norwegian computing literature to denote the area or layer of a system where data is cached to speed up access. A cache is a storage layer that keeps copies of frequently accessed data closer to the requester, reducing latency and bandwidth use. The cacheplassen concept applies across hardware and software, from CPU L1/L2/L3 caches and GPU caches to operating system page caches, disk caches, web caches, and database caches.

Placement involves deciding which data to store and where to store it within a hierarchy. Eviction policies determine which cached items are removed when space is needed; common policies include least-recently-used (LRU), least-frequently used (LFU), first-in-first-out (FIFO), and time-based or custom policies. Cache coherence and consistency protocols ensure that multiple caches reflect the same data in coherent systems, such as MESI in CPU caches or coherence protocols in distributed caches.

In distributed systems, cache placement may use strategies like replication, erasure coding, or consistent hashing to place data across multiple nodes. The goal is to maximize cache hits while minimizing overhead, and to balance freshness, latency, and storage cost. Performance is typically measured by cache hit rate, miss penalties, and latency reductions.

Applications include operating systems, web browsers, content delivery networks, databases, and cloud services, where effective cache placement is a key factor in system performance.