fully associative cache

A cache where data from any address can be stored in any cache

location. The whole address must be used as the tag. All

tags must be compared simultaneously (associatively) with the

requested address and if one matches then its associated data

is accessed. This requires an associative memory to hold the

tags which makes this form of cache more expensive. It does

however solve the problem of contention for cache locations

(cache conflict) since a block need only be flushed when the

whole cache is full and then the block to flush can be

selected in a more efficient way.

See also direct mapped cache, set associative cache.