unix is less an operating system than a worldview: everything is a file, every program does one thing, and text streams are the universal interface. linux is the worldview’s most successful implementation — a monolithic kernel started by a finnish undergraduate in 1991, now running most of the internet, every android phone, and the top 500 supercomputers without exception. 𐃏 this page is the trunk; the sharpened tools each get their own branch:
Cache
Honestly, the diagrams that I wish to reproduce already exist here. Currently this page is in construction and probably will be until I finish my Doctorate.
“Memory is the mother of all wisdom." — Aeschylus
Babbage’s Big Brain
Memory as a Hierarchy — Not a Monolith
Hierarchy exists for two intertwined reasons:
- Physics – Smaller structures are faster and nearer to ALUs but hold less data; larger structures store more but are farther away and thus slower.
- Economics – Fast memory costs disproportionately more per byte.
An efficient system arranges multiple layers so that > the majority of accesses hit the small, fast part, > while the bulk of bytes reside in the large, cheap part.
Backlinks (2)
1. Wiki /wiki/
Knowledge is a paradox. The more one understand, the more one realises the vastness of his ignorance.