to speed up MS OS. One of them made me say huh?
Basically, it claimed that the OS initially doesn't know to access the
CPU's L2 cache and that you should put the size of the L2 cache
(in megabytes) into a registry location.
From my days in CS classes, I remember that the L1 and L2 caches
are controlled by the HW not the OS. The OS and all other programs
make a request to the CPU to access memory. How the
HW/CPU/memory subsytem accesses the memory is fully abstracted
from the SW including the OS.
So, I looked into the registry and the location is there. I've not tried
it as it sounds rediculous. Here is the quote from the forum.
Does this make any sense to anybody? I think it is just bull. Or did
To make Windows XP use L2 cache
by default windows doesn't recognise your L2 cache on processor and doesn't make use of it, to enable it run regedit and navigate to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Session Manager > MemoryManagment
there is a DWORD called "SecondLevelDataCache" double click it, select Decimal and set the amount of L2 cache you have (e.g. if you have 256KB, then just type 256, and make sure you enter it in Decimal, not Hexadecimal)
MS do something outside the bounds of normal CS theory
(wouldn't be the first time)? Although, such efforts by them that I am
aware of seem more hype than performance.