理解cache misses & instruction misses& cache locality

• cache

  A CPU cache is a hardware used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory.

  Most CPUs have a hierarchy of multiple cache levels with separate instruction-specific and data-specific caches at level 1.

• cache miss

  A cache miss is a failed attempt to read or write a piece of data in the cache, which results in a main memory access with much longer latency.

  There are three kinds of cache misses:

  1. instruction read miss
  2. data read miss
  3. data write miss

• Locality of reference

  Locality of reference (princip