fully associative cache

fully associative cache

A cache where data from any address can be stored in any cachelocation. The whole address must be used as the tag. Alltags must be compared simultaneously (associatively) with therequested address and if one matches then its associated datais accessed. This requires an associative memory to hold thetags which makes this form of cache more expensive. It doeshowever solve the problem of contention for cache locations(cache conflict) since a block need only be flushed when thewhole cache is full and then the block to flush can beselected in a more efficient way.

See also direct mapped cache, set associative cache.