[WayneS]

I like to combine the graphs together into one picture and then another processor structure appears the picture: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4893/mem_lat3.jpg

This graph show the memory latency for a linked list walk that strides across a certain size buffer in memory. I used to use this picture for interviews and ask people to explain as much as they can about the processor from the picture. It end works for people who know nothing about processor architecture as I can walk them over what it says and see how they think and react to new information.

[phaker]

What processor is it? Or at least: how old is it?

[WayneS]

Old now '95. That is the an early pre-production version Pentium Pro running at 100 Mhz. The 256k L2 cache was really fast relative to memory because it was in that second die in the same chip.