Principle of locality: Memory Hierarchies 

• Text and data are not accessed randomly

• Temporal locality

  • Recently accessed items will be accessed in the near future (e.g., code in loops, top of stack)

• Spatial locality

  • Items at addresses close to the addresses of recently accessed items will be accessed in the near future (elements of arrays)

• Leads to memory hierarchy at two main interface levels:

  • Processor - Main memory -> Introduction of caches
  • Main memory - Secondary memory -> Virtual memory (paging systems)

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