Upgrading
Section 1
System Board
Chapter 2: Upgrading
There are two major components that may be up-
graded on the MVE486 system board. They are the
CPU, and the Cache memory. This section covers the
Cache upgrade in detail.
Please refer to Chapter 1 for CPU upgrade informa-
tion.
Upgrading the Cache
The MVE486 supports a total of 3 different cache
sizes--64, 128, and
Generally, increasing the
cache size, increases system performance. While the
increase in performance is not linear, programs with
repetitive routines or average size data blocks with
benefit the most from a larger cache size. These
programs include spread sheets and CAD programs.
The cache on the MVE486 has 4 major components:
l
The cache controller -- This is the logic that con-
trols the cache and is built into the chip set.
l
The cache
memory --
A set of high speed, SRAM
memory where the data is stored.
l
The
cache tags --
One or two
chips that
keep track of what locations of main memory are
stored in the cache.
l
Dirty bit buffers -- One smaller
chips that
is used to control whether the information in the
cache needs to be written back to main memory.
When upgrading the cache, the cache memory, and
cache tags are affected. Table 2-l lists the various
Copyright 1993
Version DO1
2 - 1
