Now, assume the cache has a 99 percent hit rate, but the data the CPU actually needs for its 100th access is sitting in L2, with a 10-cycle (10ns) access latency. That means it takes the CPU 99 nanoseconds to perform the first 99 reads and 10 nanoseconds to pe...
Below is a plot of Intel CPU clock speed at introduction versus time. There is an abrupt plateau in 2003 where clock speed stopped increasing. Since then, CPU makers have been using multi-core technology to drive performance (effective performance extrapolated as the pink dashed line), but this...