Making Software: How is data stored?
Computers depend on memory - the CPU6 and GPU10 are just data processing machines and the worst thing that could happen is a clock cycle wasted waiting for data due to latency12. But fast memory is expensive and power hungry so we arrange it into a hierarchy - the closer to the processing unit the faster the memory needs to be at the expense of capacity and as we get further away from the processing unit we can increase the capacity at the expense of speed. The fastest memory outside of the CPU registers is the L1 Cache4 which is super tiny, in the region of 64 kilobytes, but super fast, with access speeds around 1ns. The L1 Cache stores both instructions and data with direct access to the CPU and therefore needs to run as close to the clock speed of the CPU as possible. They are fed in turn by slightly larger and slower caches that keep them full. Caches are a type of memory called Static Random Access Memory (SRAM)17, and outside of the caches are banks of much larger Dynamic Random
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