Vahemäluks

Vahemäluks, often translated as cache memory, is a smaller, faster memory component that stores frequently accessed data from the main memory (RAM). The primary purpose of vahemäluks is to speed up data retrieval. When a processor needs to access data, it first checks the vahemäluks. If the data is found there, it is retrieved very quickly, significantly reducing the time the processor has to wait. If the data is not in the vahemäluks, it is fetched from the main memory, and a copy is then placed in the vahemäluks for potential future use.

Vahemäluks operates on the principle of locality, which suggests that programs tend to access data and instructions that are close to each other in memory, or that they tend to access the same data and instructions repeatedly over short periods. By storing these frequently used items closer to the processor, vahemäluks minimizes the latency associated with accessing slower main memory.

There are typically multiple levels of vahemäluks in modern computer systems, denoted as L1, L2, and L3. L1 vahemäluks is the smallest and fastest, located directly within the processor core. L2 vahemäluks is larger and slightly slower than L1, and L3 vahemäluks is the largest and slowest of the on-chip caches, often shared among multiple processor cores. The hierarchical structure allows for a balance between speed, size, and cost, optimizing overall system performance. The effectiveness of vahemäluks is measured by its hit rate, which is the percentage of times the requested data is found in the cache.