Explain the differences between "Direct Mapped", "Fully Associative", and "Set Associative" caches.

Electrical Engineering Technical Interview Questions and Answers

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16. Explain the differences between "Direct Mapped", "Fully Associative", and "Set Associative" caches.

If each block has only one place it can appear in the cache, the cache is said to be direct mapped. The mapping is usually (block-frame address) modulo (number of blocks in cache).
If a block can be placed anywhere in the cache, the cache is said to be fully associative.
If a block can be placed in a restricted set of places in the cache, the cache is said to be set associative. A set is a group of two or more blocks in the cache. A block is first mapped onto a set, and then the block can be placed anywhere within the set. The set is usually chosen by bit selection; that is, (block-frame address) modulo (number of sets in cache). If there are n blocks in a set, the cache placement is called n-way set associative.

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