Apple will apparently be using a caching system that they've patented to take advantage of broadband connections for maximizing video quality and smoothness, and will supposedly allow direct-to-iPod transfers through the service.

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Others at the edge of the Web aim to improve the existing system by using caching technology from Akamai and others.

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Chaitanya Kanojia, Aereo's chief executive, said Aereo's smooth play is due in part to the company building its own transcoding system, and there's no buffering or caching of content.

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Of course the total energy used by a hard disk drive depends upon the actual usage and power saving modes, and caching of data can reduce the energy used by a HDD in a computer system.

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In particular, write caching in notebook computers could offer significant power use advantages besides a boost in overall system performance.

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Companies can buy a 10-processor system, for example, and allocate one processor to a firewall, one to caching, two to a database, and six to balancing application workload, thereby making those applications highly available.

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Also introduced is advanced SSD Caching II, allowing users to cache additional frequently used programs and files using multiple SSDs to instantly upgrade system performance.

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Caching frequently used content on SSDs or flash memory is becoming a common approach to accelerate performance for most storage system suppliers.

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