29 September 1997 – Subject To Change
Glossary
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UVPROM
Ultraviolet (erasable) programmable read-only memory.
valid
Allocated. Valid cache blocks have been loaded with data and may return cache hits
when accessed.
victim
Used in reference to a cache block in the cache of a system bus node. The cache
block is valid but is about to be replaced due to a cache block resource conflict.
virtual cache
A cache that is addressed with virtual addresses. The tag of the cache is a virtual
address. This process allows direct addressing of the cache without having to go
through the translation buffer making cache hit times faster.
VHSIC
Very-high-speed integrated circuit.
VLSI
Very-large-scale integration.
VRAM
Video random-access memory.
word
Two contiguous bytes (16 bits) starting on an arbitrary byte boundary. The bits are
numbered from right to left, 0 through 15.
write-back
A cache management technique in which write operation data is written into cache
but is not written into main memory in the same operation. This may result in tempo-
rary differences between cache data and main memory data. Some logic unit must
maintain coherency between cache and main memory.
write-back cache
Copies are kept of any data in the region; read and write operations may use the cop-
ies, and write operations use additional state to determine whether there are other
copies to invalidate or update.