ITPEC IP October 2019 Question 10

The CPU checks the primary cache first and, on a miss, checks the secondary cache before accessing slower main memory. The primary cache is smaller and faster, while the secondary cache is generally larger but slower than the primary cache and still faster than RAM.

Answer (c)

Why not others:
- primary cache normally has less capacity than secondary cache
- secondary cache is faster, not slower, than main memory
- required data need not all be loaded into cache when a program starts; cache contents are populated according to memory access behavior

Key rule: The memory hierarchy is checked from smaller and faster levels toward larger and slower levels: L1, then L2, then main memory.

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