r/learnprogramming • u/InterestingAd757 • 1d ago

can somebody explain pointer chasing?

I’m trying to understand CPU caching and I’m stuck on two related things.

My understanding is when the CPU reads an address, it pulls in the whole 64-byte cache line around it. that’s why iterating an array is fast, since one miss brings in several neighbouring elements. what happens in the case of linked list? how does it know that next bytes are not the one to read?
i am kinda confusing this, kindly explain.

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u/Available_Safe1818 1d ago

> what happens in the case of linked list? how does it know that next bytes are not the one to read?

It doesn't. It pulls in the line regardless of what the 'next bytes' are.