Cache Miss

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What Does Cache Miss Mean?

Cache miss is a state where the data requested for processing by a component or application is not found in the cache memory. It causes execution delays by requiring the program or application to fetch the data from other cache levels or the main memory.

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Techopedia Explains Cache Miss

Cache miss occurs within cache memory access modes and methods. For each new request, the processor searched the primary cache to find that data. If the data is not found, it is considered a cache miss.

Each cache miss slows down the overall process because after a cache miss, the central processing unit (CPU) will look for a higher level cache, such as L1, L2, L3 and random access memory (RAM) for that data. Further, a new entry is created and copied in cache before it can be accessed by the processor.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.