What is a cache?

Type the following into Google:

define: cache

(or go here)

cache??

In general terms it is the storage of something, memory, information, data, nuts, beer, quips, white t-shirts.

depends ont he question, but seeing as it’s filed under mac, your cache is just another type of memory, the larger and faster the cache, the better your mac will run, but what would be usefull is, why do you want to know? playing around with onyx?

Since this appears to be a computer question:

A cache is a storage area set aside for data that is often or recently accessed. The main purpose of the cache is to speed up retrieval of frequently accessed data. This is done by storing a copy of the data in the cache. Applications look in the cache before going to the original source; if the data is in the cache, then the application uses that copy instead.

Cache is usually an order or magnitude faster the the source data it’s caching. for example, Accessing your browser’s cache is much faster than redownloading web pages from the internet. Similarly, a cache in ram is much faster that accessing data from the hard drive. Even the CPU itself has an onchip cache that is separate from the main RAM.

Conversely, Cache is usually more expensive than the source data store. Hence the need to keep caches small. Alot of research goes into determine the optimum cache size for a particular situation; it is definitely not true that bigger is always better.

Want to know more, use wikipedia.

Or like geocaching?