Cache coherence

Cache coherence

Cache coherence refers to the process of keeping multiple cached copies of the same memory location consistent across different caches. This is especially important in multi-core processors, where each CPU core may have its own cache.

There are two primary strategies for maintaining coherence:

• Write-invalidate: When a core writes to a cached value, it invalidates that value in all other caches. Other cores must fetch the updated value from memory (or the writing core) on their next access. This is a lazy strategy — it saves bandwidth but may cause a delay on future reads.
• Write-update: When a core writes to a cached value, it broadcasts the update to all other caches so they can update their copies immediately. This is an eager strategy — it keeps all caches ready, but increases communication cost.