As we continue to build faster and fast. er computers, their performance is be coming increasingly dependent on the memory hierarchy. Both the clock speed of the machine and its throughput per clock depend heavily on the memory hierarchy. The time to complet. e a cache acce88 is oft. en the factor that det. er mines the cycle time. The effectiveness of the hierarchy in keeping the average cost of a reference down has a major impact on how close the sustained per formance is to the peak performance. Small changes in the performance of the memory hierarchy cause large changes in overall system...