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    FALLSEM2021-22 CSE2001 TH VL2021220104187 Reference Material I 20-09-2021 Memory Hierarchy Design and Its Characteristics

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    Manan Sharma
    The document discusses memory hierarchy design and cache memory. It describes memory hierarchy as having multiple levels that increase in capacity and access time as they move further from the CPU. This includes levels such as registers, cache memory, main memory, and external storage. Cache memory sits between the CPU and main memory, acting as a buffer to store frequently accessed data for faster retrieval times. The performance of cache memory is determined by its hit ratio, which measures the number of times data is found in cache versus needing to access slower main memory.

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    FALLSEM2021-22 CSE2001 TH VL2021220104187 Reference Material I 20-09-2021 Memory Hierarchy Design and Its Characteristics

    Uploaded by

    Manan Sharma
    40 views3 pages
    The document discusses memory hierarchy design and cache memory. It describes memory hierarchy as having multiple levels that increase in capacity and access time as they move further from the CPU. This includes levels such as registers, cache memory, main memory, and external storage. Cache memory sits between the CPU and main memory, acting as a buffer to store frequently accessed data for faster retrieval times. The performance of cache memory is determined by its hit ratio, which measures the number of times data is found in cache versus needing to access slower main memory.

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    The document discusses memory hierarchy design and cache memory. It describes memory hierarchy as having multiple levels that increase in capacity and access time as they move further from the CPU. This includes levels such as registers, cache memory, main memory, and external storage. Cache memory sits between the CPU and main memory, acting as a buffer to store frequently accessed data for faster retrieval times. The performance of cache memory is determined by its hit ratio, which measures the number of times data is found in cache versus needing to access slower main memory.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    40 views3 pages

    FALLSEM2021-22 CSE2001 TH VL2021220104187 Reference Material I 20-09-2021 Memory Hierarchy Design and Its Characteristics

    Uploaded by

    Manan Sharma
    The document discusses memory hierarchy design and cache memory. It describes memory hierarchy as having multiple levels that increase in capacity and access time as they move further from the CPU. This includes levels such as registers, cache memory, main memory, and external storage. Cache memory sits between the CPU and main memory, acting as a buffer to store frequently accessed data for faster retrieval times. The performance of cache memory is determined by its hit ratio, which measures the number of times data is found in cache versus needing to access slower main memory.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 3

    Memory Hierarchy Design and its

    Characteristics
    • Difficulty Level : Easy
    • Last Updated : 17 Dec, 2018
    In the Computer System Design, Memory Hierarchy is an enhancement to
    organize the memory such that it can minimize the access time. The Memory
    Hierarchy was developed based on a program behavior known as locality of
    references.The figure below clearly demonstrates the different levels of memory
    hierarchy :

    This Memory Hierarchy Design is divided into 2 main types:


    1. External Memory or Secondary Memory –
    Comprising of Magnetic Disk, Optical Disk, Magnetic Tape i.e.
    peripheral storage devices which are accessible by the processor via
    I/O Module.
    2. Internal Memory or Primary Memory –
    Comprising of Main Memory, Cache Memory & CPU registers. This is
    directly accessible by the processor.
    We can infer the following characteristics of Memory Hierarchy Design from
    above figure:
    1. Capacity:
    It is the global volume of information the memory can store. As we
    move from top to bottom in the Hierarchy, the capacity increases.
    2. Access Time:
    It is the time interval between the read/write request and the
    availability of the data. As we move from top to bottom in the
    Hierarchy, the access time increases.
    3. Performance:
    Earlier when the computer system was designed without Memory
    Hierarchy design, the speed gap increases between the CPU registers
    and Main Memory due to large difference in access time. This results
    in lower performance of the system and thus, enhancement was
    required. This enhancement was made in the form of Memory
    Hierarchy Design because of which the performance of the system
    increases. One of the most significant ways to increase system
    performance is minimizing how far down the memory hierarchy one
    has to go to manipulate data.
    4. Cost per bit:
    As we move from bottom to top in the Hierarchy, the cost per bit
    increases i.e. Internal Memory is costlier than External Memory.
    Cache Memory in Computer
    Organization
    Cache Memory is a special very high-speed memory. It is used to speed up
    and synchronizing with high-speed CPU. Cache memory is costlier than
    main memory or disk memory but economical than CPU registers. Cache
    memory is an extremely fast memory type that acts as a buffer between
    RAM and the CPU. It holds frequently requested data and instructions so
    that they are immediately available to the CPU when needed.
    Cache memory is used to reduce the average time to access data from the
    Main memory. The cache is a smaller and faster memory which stores
    copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations. There are
    various different independent caches in a CPU, which store instructions and
    data.

    Levels of memory:
    • Level 1 or Register –
    It is a type of memory in which data is stored and accepted that are
    immediately stored in CPU. Most commonly used register is
    accumulator, Program counter, address register etc.
    • Level 2 or Cache memory –
    It is the fastest memory which has faster access time where data is
    temporarily stored for faster access.
    • Level 3 or Main Memory –
    It is memory on which computer works currently. It is small in size
    and once power is off data no longer stays in this memory.
    • Level 4 or Secondary Memory –
    It is external memory which is not as fast as main memory but data
    stays permanently in this memory.
    Cache Performance:
    When the processor needs to read or write a location in main memory, it first
    checks for a corresponding entry in the cache.
    •
    If the processor finds that the memory location is in the cache,
    a cache hit has occurred and data is read from cache
    • If the processor does not find the memory location in the cache,
    a cache miss has occurred. For a cache miss, the cache allocates
    a new entry and copies in data from main memory, then the request
    is fulfilled from the contents of the cache.
    The performance of cache memory is frequently measured in terms of a
    quantity called Hit ratio.
    Hit ratio = hit / (hit + miss) = no. of hits/total accesses
    We can improve Cache performance using higher cache block size, higher
    associativity, reduce miss rate, reduce miss penalty, and reduce the time to
    hit in the cache.

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