<p>I don’t quite understand the difference between a physical and a logical cache. Can anyone give me a quick explanation?</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, the only difference is that one uses physical addresses while the other uses virtual (logical) addresses.</p>
<p>I assumed all caches used physical addresses, but I guess that isn’t true. I think logical caches need to flush the cache every time there is a context switch? Not exactly sure how they work.</p>
<p>That’s roughly what I thought too. I asked my tutor but he freaked out and told me it was a perverted question. 
I just don’t understand how a logical cache is supposed to speed up the process of recovering data. Oh well. Thanks.</p>
<p>Recovering data or retrieving it? I understand how it can theoretically be faster for retrieving data – that’s because memory addresses don’t need to be translated into its physical addresses first before retrieving it from the cache.</p>