Memory Hierarchy

• By taking advantage of the principle of locality:

  • Present the user with as much memory as is available in the cheapest technology.
  • Provide access at the speed offered by the fastest technology.

Control

Datapath

Secondary

Storage

(Disk)

Processor

Registers

Main

Memory

(DRAM)

Second

Level

Cache

(SRAM)

On-Chip

Cache

1s

10,000,000s

(10s ms)

100,000 s

(.1s ms)

Speed (ns):

10s

100s

100s

Gs

Size (bytes):

Ks

Ms

Tertiary

Storage

(Disk/Tape)

10,000,000,000s

(10s sec)

10,000,000 s

(10s ms)

Ts

Distributed

Memory

Remote

Cluster

Memory

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