IF01070

Cache

In computer science, a cache is a collection of data duplicating original values stored elsewhere or computed earlier, where the original data is expensive (usually in terms of access time) to fetch or compute relative to reading the cache. A simple definition of cache would be: A temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access. Once the data is stored in the cache, future use can be made by accessing the cached copy rather than re-fetching or re-computing the original data, so that the average access time is lower.

Caches have proven to be extremely effective in many areas of computing because access patterns in typical computer applications have locality of reference. There are several kinds of locality, but this article primarily deals with data that are accessed close together in time (temporal locality). The data might or might not be located physically close to each other (spatial locality).

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