A translation lookaside buffer (TLB) is a memory cache that stores the recent translations of virtual memory to physical memory. It is used to reduce the time taken to access a user memory location. It can be called an address-translation cache. It is a part of the chip's memory-management unit (MMU).
Translation Lookaside Buffer (i.e. TLB) is required only if Virtual Memory is used by a processor. In short, TLB speeds up the translation of virtual addresses to a physical address by storing page-table in faster memory. In fact, TLB also sits between CPU and Main memory.
A TLB is organized as a fully associative cache and typically holds 16 to 512 entries. Each TLB entry holds a virtual page number and its corresponding physical page number. The TLB is accessed using the virtual page number.
