Data Caches

Data caching is a special form of data duplication. Caches make copies of data to improve performance. This is in contrast to mirroring disks, in which the copies of data are made primarily to improve availability. Although the two have different goals, the architecture of the implementations is surprisingly similar.

Caches are a popular method of improving performance in computer systems. The Solaris operating environment essentially uses all available main memory, RAM, as a cache to the file system. Relational database management systems (RDBMS) manage their own cache of data. Modern microprocessors have many caches, in addition to the typical one to three levels of data cache. Hardware RAID arrays have caches that increase the ...

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