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There are several levels of caches within a CPU. The role of a CPU cache is to localize data as close to the processor as possible and retrieve the data as fast possible. The L1 cache is the fastest CPU memory. Any data served from the L1 cache has the lowest latency.
If the data is not found in the L1 cache, then the L2 cache attempts to service the memory request. The L2 cache is larger and has a slower latency than the L1 cache but a lower latency than RAM. The processer determines the layers of memory like the L3 cache and others. Overtime, different level of CPU caches have become very efficient, meaning CPU performance is optimized. It is important to consider cache size when researching the CPU cache, because size determines the amount of data that is located on memory that is closer to the processor and faster than RAM.