What is the history and development of memory caching?

Question

I have tried to research the history and development of memory caching online, but I find it hard to find good information. Many resources online would have you believe caching was introduced with the Intel 80486, and generally assuming it's a only thing for microprocessors. The Stanford Superfoonly design from the early 1970s included a cache that was projected to provide a ~10x speedup over a PDP-10. I'm sure even earlier examples could be found elsewhere.

Answer 1

Preface: This focuses on real machines, available as production units, not prototypes or experimental designs. Nor are the examples exhaustive. I will also spare any discussion of memory hierarchy but go with the meaning of CPU cache as it's canon today.

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The development of Cache is a continuation of storage hierarchy (*1), a principle still visible in IBM Mainframes and interlinkt with the development of virtual memory. Both are methods to increase speed of most active memory regions while at the same time providing ever larger amounts of usable address space.

The first step might have been machines like (*2) the Z23, a 1961 transistor based reimplementation of the earlier Z22. While the Z22 only placed the first 16 words (the registers) in Core, the Z23 had 256 additional words of core within the (Drum) address space.

The mid 1960s also mark the point in time where core installation became large enough to complete replace Drum as main memory, redesignating it as very fast external storage. Beside rapid growing size and independent address space layout, this also resulted in independence from Drum timing(*3). This independence allowed the use of different cycle times depending on different memory types, etc.

Next step was virtual addressing, allowing to put arbitrary memory regions in limited core while keeping the rest on larger but less expensive media than drums - aka magnetic Disks :). Base is a TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer). First production machines to implement a TLB might have been the IBM 360/67 of 1965 and the GE 645 (*4) of 1967, although the later might still be count as SST build for the project.

Core was, at the time, with below 1 µs access, already incredible fast, but semiconductor memory became a possibility soon after. This created the same opportunity of speed increase as with Core vs. Drum.

In January 1968 IBM introduced the /360 Model 85 providing Cache as we know it today. The first units were eventually delivered in December of 1969. The Model 85 used the 2385 Processor Storage in

• 2 or 4 way configuration (*5) with
• 512 KiB to 4 MiB and 960 ns cycle time

plus a

• 32 KiB cache at 240 ns

The Model 85 became especially influential due a description of its cache design by John Liptay's article Structural aspects of the System/360 Model 85 - Part II The cache (*6), published in IBM's Systems Journal Vol.7 No.1 of March 1968, p. 15-21. (scanned here).

In fact, IBM did beat themself to market in August 1969, when they delivered the /360 Model 195, including as well 32 KiB cache, putting memory speed to the extreme:

• four megabyte Core at 754 ns
• one megabyte Thin-Film Memory at 120 ns (!) (*7)
• 32 KiB Semiconductor RAM, acting as cache,at 54 ns

The 195 was the fastes general purpose computer at it's time, only beaten in pure FP power by Cray's CDC6600(*8). The Model 195 performance was comparable to an early 1990s Pentium.

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Now, for the x86 time line, The 486 was the first (Intel) implementation with an on chip cache. Caches have been used before for 286 and 386 systems as well (*9). For the 386 Intel even offered a dedicated cache controller, the 82385, which has been used in a series of motherboards.

After all, cache isn't anything special, just a logic that saves some memory in a fast RAM and slows the CPU down when the desired content is not within that fast section. As a result even 8 bit systems used cache. The best known examples may be the ZIP Chip and Rocket Chip, for the Apple II, both utilizing 8 KiB of static RAM to have a 65C02 run at 4..10 MHz in a standard 1 MHz Apple II. But it was implemented already as early as 1985 with the Speed Demon in 1985, going 3.5 MHz with a 4 KiB Cache.

In 1988 Apple introduced the Apple IIc Plus which essentially included a Zip-Chip based design on the motherboard, running the 1 MHz base system with 4 MHz Cache, making it the most useful Apple II up to date.

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Bottom line: 1968/69 would be a safe assumption about first cache architecture as we understand it today delivered in production units. As expected, Cache is way older and way more used than just with the 80486.

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*1 - Think of the basic hierarchy of

• Disk
  • -> Drum
    • -> Core
      • -> Semiconductor

each faster than the previous, but as well more expensive and smaller in capacity. Mainframe view of storage goes in many more stages from cache all the way to tape libraries and even offline storage like card stacks :))

*2 - Z23 used as example due being a linear step from the Z22, with only tubes exchanged for transistors and more core available as add on, but there are several other based on the combination of Core and Drum within a singular address space in the 1950..1965 time frame.

*3 - Drum based computers (like the 1955 Z22), are deeply intervened with the drum rotation. System clock is derivative of the Drums rotation, thus very monotonous and unchangeable - at least not without a huge speed penalty. In fact, programs for Drum computers themself were often written with rotation speed and drum size in mind, but that's a different story.

*4 - Famous for being build for running Multics

*5 - That means the memory was organized interleaved, so 2/4 consecutive access could be done in a single cycle. A bit like today's way of burst access.

*6 - Notable that he already describes it as Cache, while IBM continued for several years to call it 'Buffer Memory' in continuation of their hierarchical storage concept, where everything is Memory of a different stage.

*7 - Thin-Film Memory is a kind of 'integrated' Core memory, where the cores themself are little (magnetic) metal dots placed on a glass plate covered by 'wires' placed in a fashion similar to PCB traces are made today. So the result are quite small boards with several dozens KiB each.

It took solid state a few years to surpass that and core in general. In some way they are to core memory what the the Bugatti Veyron 16 cylinder engine is to combustion engines. A last glorious and magnificent uprising against time before being made useless by tiny, cheap, soulless electric engines that simply do the job way better than any fuel sucker ever could do.

*8 - Until the 195 IBM tried to place the /360 as well for scientific number crunching. But the late 1960s are when general purpose CPUs and high performance FP finally parted way and IBM focusing on the former. A bit like again today with GPU's used for number crunching while standard GP-CPU do the data shovelling from and to disks or across the netword.

*9 - There's also the Segment Descriptor Cache, starting with the 286, but that's a different beast.

Answer 2

The concept of cache memory was formalised by Maurice Wilkes in his 1965 paper, Slave Memories and Dynamic Storage Allocation. This describes a hierarchical memory setup with a small amount of fast core memory serving a larger amount of slower core memory. It refers to system descriptions of “slave memories” in existing computer designs at the time, the ETL Mk-6 computers and the Atlas 2; these had very small, very-high-speed memories used as instruction caches (the Atlas 2’s cache was however never implemented). Wilkes’ paper discusses the practicalities of extending the concept to use larger amounts of cache for more general purposes.

It covers many concepts and concerns which will still be familiar to present-day readers: tag bits, cache coherency (which shows up in the paper as the need to write back dirty words in the cache on program switches), associativity…

The usefulness of cache memories quickly spread, and even an overview of their history and development would be quite long. One could start by looking at the citations of the Wilkes paper, and other articles published in the 60s and 70s such as DJ Kuck and DH Lawrie’s The use and performance of memory hierarchies: A survey (which features an extensive bibliography).

Caches appeared in general-purpose processors in the following years; early examples include DEC’s KL10, based on the Superfoonly design you mention, and the various cache-equipped System/360 models mentioned in Raffzahn’s answer.

It took a while for microprocessors to include cache, for a number of reasons, most importantly the available transistor budget (see Why did Intel abandon unified CPU cache? for some discussion of that), but also the fact that early microprocessors were slow enough that memory accesses weren’t necessarily a huge problem.

Answer 3

Cache in minicomputers. I received a DEC PDP-11/45 in Summer of 1972. The 45 had core memory slots in the backlane as well as, I believe, 4 slots for fast and expensive (semiconductor) memory runing at 300ns. The Fabritek memory systems company in Minneapolis was making add-on core boxes for the 45. An engineer at Fabritek worked with me as the customer to make an add-in 256 word cache memory for the 45 that it into a fast memory slot. This was roughly 1975. It worked very well and sped up the 45 nicely. His comany Minntronics sold a bunch of cache memories for the Dec PDP-11/45.

Answer 4

I think, we owe most naming in computing to IBM and other mainframe producers.

Because I see very close relations of names to enterprise accounting.

First example - computer - first it was name of occupation, in accounting department - this was a person, who made computations.

Second registers - in large scale accounting, in acc dept, exists special accountant desktop, which have few deepenings, to place here books, with which now work accountant.

And then these experts, who integrate first computers to enterprise accounting departments, faces with slow memory and fast memory. And those times, computer experts was extremely good paid, so for sure, they have account in bank and used all bank services.

So they known, that you could spend money from account with check, but is is could be slow, for example, bank could work with checks only on working days, 9-18, but use cache (paper money, or even coins) is fast, but cache volume is small, so name cache sticks.

For exact technology, first computers was relay based and they are slow, tens of Hertz in best cases; next appear tubes - could be Megahertz, but non-reliable; than appear ferromagnetic coils and delay lines.

Before ICs, broadest tech was tubes, they was fast, but expensive, and first fast RAM sure was on tubes, and slow was on delay lines and on ferromagnetic coils.

But for tubes I'm not sure, if from them made RAM, or only registers, because make from binary tubes is extremely expensive, and memory tubes appear later.

When appear transistors, they very early used to make logic and RAM, but this was later.

And when appear universal ICs, most computing terminology already exists.

One more notice - first widely known talks and even some works on parallel computing made in 1950s and early 1960s (IBM, Ferranti, Burroughs, Parallel computing history on wikipedia), so they know cost of cache long before i486 :)