Cache RAM and Main Memory
As you learned in Chapter 4, “The Motherboard and CPU,” CPUs with Level 1 (L1) and/or Level 2 (L2) cache RAM perform RAM-bound operations much more quickly than CPUs that lack cache.
There are two reasons why cache RAM helps the CPU perform RAM-bound operations faster:
Cache RAM is faster than main memory.
Cache RAM holds a copy of the last-accessed section of main memory.
Because programs and other processes performed by the CPU often use the same section of memory several times before they need to access a new section of memory, checking cache RAM first for information enables a CPU to perform tasks more quickly than if it checked main memory every time. In most situations, the memory section needed by the CPU is stored ...
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