FSB and cache???

[dbernie41]

Im trying to learn as much about computers as I can and I have been wondering this and I know that people on here know just about everything. So what does front side bus and cache actually do?

 

[ekÆsine]

heh, flattery will get you nowhere on this board as most poeple can detect BS. this is my own explanation, not the technical explanation . front side bus (FSB) is bandwidth between to things. the bigger it is the more information that can be passed through it.

FSB is like a metal pipe and the information is like water. even though you have a really large FSB doesn't mean it is used to the full potential for example pentium4 C cannot utilize the full 800Mhz FSB

cache is integrated memory on a device. any device with cache like cd-rom, processor (has L1 and L2 cache, L1 being faster i think), and hard disk use this memory first as a buffer to speed up their processes by storing infomation in cache. cache is generally just a super fast storage and is usually faster than main memory (your RAM).

 

[Traudong]

But cache memory is very small compared with RAM (L1, L2 or even L3). Why does it not bigger, or that's enough?

 

[ThirtySixBelow]

Because, cache memory is very expensive, which is why the p4 EE is around 900 dollars, because it has a huge 2mb of L3 cache memory. The memory does get a tad slower as you move down in levels which is why the size also generally gets bigger because you can afford more of the slightly slower stuff. Im sure if they wanted to they could make a processor with as much cache memory as they wanted, but the cpu would be really big and no one but bill gates would buy one.