K.I.S.S!

I am admittedly ignorant of the full operation of these new super-giga-boost caches, but what is the point? How are these different to adding extra RAM? I would have thought that one could adapt the standard RAM interface and improve its throughput in order to support other data transfers, such as those more related to data normally carried by the hard disk.

Surely we should be simplifying and integrating computer architecture, not adding more components that may well be outdated when faster flash storage comes to the mainstream market.

OR - With all these caches about in chips, hardisks, RAM and now the motherboard, is it pointing to some sort of distributed chache architecure?

Confused!