SoC Notes



• 1. Cache Write Policy

   

  When a system writes data to cache, it must at some point write that data to the backing store as well. The timing of this write is controlled by what is known as the write policy.

   

  There are two basic writing approaches:

  • Write-through: write is done synchronously both to the cache and to the backing store.
  • Write-back (also called write-behind): initially, writing is done only to the cache. The write to the backing store is postponed until the cache blocks containing the data are about to be modified/replaced by new content.

   

  2. TLB

  A memory management unit (MMU) that fetches page table entries from main memory has a specialized cache, used for recording the results of virtual address to physical address translations. This specialized cache is called a translation lookaside buffer (TLB).

   

  3. 2-way set associative cache