RAM question

[Sean]

On Fri, 16 Nov 2001, Edward Glowacki wrote:
<snips>
> You'll get better performance with bigger cache,

This is not necessarily true. First the performance is a curve 1/x type of
curve with diminishing returns so yes you get better performance
_sometimes_ but it can be like putting a gig of ram in a computer to run
vi.

Second it varies, by the _type_ of data you are crunching, a larger cache
will NOT speed up crunching of large streams of data that do not depend on
previous results. There is nothing to cache. In fact, many times these
types of applications are programmed to bypass it.

There is also a major difference between size and speed. For typical
usage, a 512k 1:1 cache even though smaller will give better performance
than a larger 2M 2:1 cache for a lot of applications.