Revisiting Ulrich Drepper's classic: What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory

Abhishekcur · x · 2026-09-23

The author revisits Ulrich Drepper's classic "What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory," calling it a resource that keeps paying off as your systems knowledge grows. It covers CPU caches, cache lines, memory hierarchy, RAM, memory controllers, latency vs. bandwidth, NUMA, and DMA. The first read can feel abstract, but returning to it with real performance-problem experience makes the ideas click — still one of the best resources for building a solid mental model of modern memory systems.

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