What is the use of the image cache?

Answer 1

Image cache has been implemented in quite a few programs. They all follow the same general idea. Caching, in general, is a duplicate of the original data which is stored in another location that is much easier and faster for retrieval than the original data. Most modern Web Browsers have caching implemented. When you visit a website, every image in the page was downloaded from the web server. All these images are stored in a temporary folder. If you ever visit that website again, the browser will check whether that image has been modified since you last downloaded it. If the image hasn’t been modified since, the browser will display the image from your temporary folder instead of downloading it. This gives the web browser the ability to display a website much faster than if it needed to download the images every time you visit the website. Image caching is also used in a number of other programs as well as games. Since many full screen games redraw everything on the screen all the time, they use image caching. Instead of loading the image from the hard drive every time, the image is saved temporary to the ram (primary storage), which can be accessed much faster.

Answer 2

In most browsers, the image cache is meant for storing data regarding images so that the page can load faster if reopened. This technique works because images consume bandwidth than text.