Question

Block caches or buffer caches are used

• A. to improve disk performance
• B. to handle interrupt
• C. to increase the capacity of the main memory
• D. to speed up main memory read operation

Answer 1

Answer: (A)

to improve disk performance

Block caches or buffer caches are used to improve disk performance to handle interrupts to increase the capacity of the main memory to speed up main memory.

Reading from a disk is very slow compared to accessing (real) memory. In addition, it is common to read the same part of a disk several times during relatively short periods of time. This is called disk buffering, and the memory used for the purpose is called the buffer cache.

Buffer cache is where data blocks are copied to perform SQL operations. Buffer cache is shared memory structure and it is concurrently accessed by all server processes.