Memory system mechanisms

To increase the average performance of a memory system, many new factors are included in modern microprocessors. Nowadays microprocessors can perform much more tasks than just read and write a monolithic memory. A cache is a new introduction which is used to speed up memory system performance. A cache is actually a small memory which is fast and can hold copies of the main memory contents. A cache controller mediates between the CPU and the memory system. It sends a memory request to cache and main memory. Now there can be a cache hit or a cache miss depending on the requested location’s existence in the cache. Direct-mapped cache is a method to implement cache. The system performance can be upgraded on using set-associative structure