Caching Strategies Simulator
Learn caching fundamentals with an interactive simulator. Visualize cache hits, misses, eviction policies (LRU, LFU, FIFO), and understand write strategies.
Category: Infrastructure
Topics covered: caching, performance, redis, educational, interactive, backend
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Caching Strategies Simulator
Learn caching fundamentals with an interactive simulator. Visualize cache hits, misses, eviction policies (LRU, LFU, FIFO), and understand write strategies.
LRU: Removes the item accessed longest ago
Green ring = in cache
Press 1-6 to request, R to reset
Cache is empty
Every request goes to the database (50-200ms). Slow!Every request = slow DB call
Repeated requests return instantly (1-10ms). 20x faster!Repeat requests = instant!
The eviction policy decides what to remove when cache is full.
Understanding Caching Strategies
Eviction Policies
- LRU (Least Recently Used): Evicts items not accessed recently. Most common in practice.
- LFU (Least Frequently Used): Evicts items accessed least often. Great for identifying hot data.
- FIFO (First In, First Out): Simple queue-based approach, evicts oldest items first.
- TTL (Time To Live): Evicts items based on expiration time. Common for sessions.
Write Strategies
- Write-Through: Writes to cache and database simultaneously. Strong consistency but higher latency.
- Write-Back: Writes to cache first, async to database. Better performance but risk of data loss.
- Write-Around: Writes directly to database, bypasses cache. Reduces cache pollution.
Key concepts
- Hit rate: Percentage of requests served from cache (higher is better).
- Cache size: Balance between memory usage and hit rate.
- Hot data: Frequently accessed items that benefit most from caching.
- Cache invalidation: One of the hardest problems in computer science.
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