Translation Look-aside Buffer

Translation Look-aside Buffer

(storage, architecture)(TLB) A table used in a virtual memory system, that lists the physical address pagenumber associated with each virtual address page number.A TLB is used in conjunction with a cache whose tags arebased on virtual addresses. The virtual address is presentedsimultaneously to the TLB and to the cache so that cacheaccess and the virtual-to-physical address translation canproceed in parallel (the translation is done "on the side").If the requested address is not cached then the physicaladdress is used to locate the data in main memory. Thealternative would be to place the translation table betweenthe cache and main memory so that it will only be activatedonce there was a cache miss.