Memory hierarchy

The hierarchical arrangement of storage in current computer architectures is called the memory hierarchy. Each level of the hierarchy has shorter access times and faster data transfer ratest than the next one down.

Most modern CPUs are so fast that for most program workloads the locality of reference of memory accesses, and the efficiency of the caching and memory transfer between different levels of the hierarchy, is the practical limitation on processing speed. As a result, the CPU spends much of its time idling, waiting for memory I/O to complete.

The memory hierarchy in most computers is as follows:

• CPU registers
• Level 1 cache
• Level 2 cache
• DRAM
• Disk storage

See also:

• Virtual memory