Term: cache

Some kinds of storage are faster than others — for example, RAM is faster than disk, a disk is faster than an internet download. A cache is an amount of space set aside in the faster media to avoid needing to use the slower media as much. A logo visible on every page on a website might be downloaded into your web browser’s cache once, so that it can be fetched from the faster disk for subsequent pages that show the exact same logo. The same technique is often used with various types of data transfers that could potentially be repetative.