Abstract: A cache system allocates memory for storage of data items by defining a series of small blocks that are uniform in size. The system allocates one or more blocks from memory and assigns them for storage of a data item. If the data item exceeds the predetermined block size, more blocks are assigned for storage. If a residual portion of the data item less than the predetermined the block size remains, the operating system may allocate an additional small storage block to store the residual portion of the data item. The operating system allocates a large number of small blocks with a plurality of blocks having different sizes where a first plurality of blocks has one block size and a second plurality of blocks has a different block size. The large number of blocks allocated by the operating system avoid contention from multiple users requesting access to the data cache. The predetermined blocks are allocated by the data cache software itself and are not allocated by the operating system.

Abstract: A cache system controls the insertion and deletion of data items using a plurality of utilization lists. When a data item is stored within the data cache, a corresponding data pointer, or other indicator, is stored within the utilization list in a manner indicative of the sequence in which data items were stored in the data cache. When a data item is subsequently retrieved from the data cache, the corresponding data pointer may be altered or moved to indicate that the data item has recently been retrieved. The data pointers corresponding to data items that have never been retrieved will indicate the sequence with which the data items were stored in the cache such that data items may be identified as least recently used (LRU) data items. The data pointers corresponding to data items that have been retrieved provide an indication of the sequence with which the data items have been retrieved such that the most recently retrieved data item is considered the most recently used (MRU) data item.