What is Spatial locality?

The tendency to access addresses near one just accessed, as when reading an array in order. It is why caches fetch data a whole cache line at a time.

Field: Memory Hierarchy

Spatial locality in the explanations

Questions that mention Spatial locality (4)

  1. What is the main purpose of cache memory?
  2. What is the typical size of a cache line (cache block) in many current CPUs?
  3. Which is the best example of temporal locality?
  4. What is the effect of increasing a cache's line size?

Related terms

Temporal locality Cache memory Cache line False sharing Miss penalty Average memory access time Capacity miss Compulsory miss Conflict miss Direct-mapped cache

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