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by kaoD 3081 days ago
On my pretty outdated Core 2 Duo Q9300: https://i.imgur.com/HQXm5FU.png

The CPU is advertised as 6 MB L2 cache[0] but it has "L1 = 4 x 32 KB 8-way set associative data caches and L2 = 2 x 3 MB 12-way set associative caches (each L2 cache is shared between 2 cores)"[1].

You can clearly see the constant time access to L1 cache up to 32KB. Then grows to (linear?) access time up to 2MB (where it still fits in one of the L2 caches) and then again a different (log-like?) function from there on.

This is really neat.

[0] https://ark.intel.com/products/33922/Intel-Core2-Quad-Proces...

[1] http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Core_2/Intel-Core%202%20Quad%2...