🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2o3u6l$ih9@fitz.TC.Cornell.EDU> strider@eos.acm.rpi.edu (Greg Moore) writes:

>>       Thanks for your attempt to help, but myself and the previous
>>       poster are refering to the external cpu cache, not the ram cache.
>>
>        OK, I'm confused.  If the external cpu cache doesn't cache
>ram, what does it cache?  A cache for the cpu is there to provide
>quick access to items stored in memory, the memory being RAM.  Or
>am I missing something?

I think we are confusing hard-disk cacheing (eg smartdrive) with memory 
cacheing.

I was referring to the cache memory, not the memory normally referred to as 
RAM.  Cache memory is the high-speed buffer that the cache controller stuffs
with data from RAM that it anticipates will be needed by the processor.  
Every time processor has to access regular RAM, with its longer access 
time, things slow down a bit.

It sounds like your 10% improvement with a 128k cache is typical, 
depending on the processor intensity of the application.  
I'm guessing that another 5% tops would be achieved by going to 256k. 
I suspect that claims of extreme degradation without cache are either due to 
some setup problem, or are actually references to disk cacheing problems.