CPU cache
![An illustration of different ways in which memory locations can be cached by particular cache locations](/Images/godic/202502/04/Cache,associative-fill-both1624.png")
![Miss rate versus cache size on the Integer portion of SPEC CPU2000](/Images/godic/202502/04/Cache,missrate1624.png")
![Memory hierarchy of an AMD Bulldozer server.](/Images/godic/202502/04/Hwloc1624.png")
![Cache hierarchy of the K8 core in the AMD Athlon 64 CPU.](/Images/godic/202502/04/Cache,hierarchy-example.svg1624.png")
A CPU cache is a cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average time to access data from the main memory. The cache is a smaller, faster memory which stores copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations. Most CPUs have different independent caches, including instruction and data caches, where the data cache is usually organized as a hierarchy of more cache levels (L1, L2, etc.).