CPU cache

摘抄：Java Memory Model (jenkov.com)

Java Memory Model (jenkov.com)

（https://jenkov.com/tutorials/java-concurrency/java-memory-model.html）

A modern computer often has 2 or more CPUs in it. Some of these CPUs may have multiple cores too. The point is, that on a modern computer with 2 or more CPUs it is possible to have more than one thread running simultaneously. Each CPU is capable of running one thread at any given time. That means that if your Java application is multithreaded, one thread per CPU may be running simultaneously (concurrently) inside your Java application.

Each CPU contains a set of registers which are essentially in-CPU memory. The CPU can perform operations much faster on these registers than it can perform on variables in main memory. That is because the CPU can access these registers much faster than it can access main memory.

Each CPU may also have a CPU cache memory layer. In fact, most modern CPUs have a cache memory layer of some size. The CPU can access its cache memory much faster than main memory, but typically not as fast as it can access its internal registers. So, the CPU cache memory is somewhere in between the speed of the internal registers and main memory. Some CPUs may have multiple cache layers (Level 1 and Level 2), but this is not so important to know to understand how the Java memory model interacts with memory. What matters is to know that CPUs can have a cache memory layer of some sort.

A computer also contains a main memory area (RAM). All CPUs can access the main memory. The main memory area is typically much bigger than the cache memories of the CPUs.

Typically, when a CPU needs to access main memory it will read part of main memory into its CPU cache. It may even read part of the cache into its internal registers and then perform operations on it. When the CPU needs to write the result back to main memory it will flush the value from its internal register to the cache memory, and at some point flush the value back to main memory.

The values stored in the cache memory is typically flushed back to main memory when the CPU needs to store something else in the cache memory. The CPU cache can have data written to part of its memory at a time, and flush part of its memory at a time. It does not have to read / write the full cache each time it is updated. Typically the cache is updated in smaller memory blocks called "cache lines". One or more cache lines may be read into the cache memory, and one or mor cache lines may be flushed back to main memory again.