A TLB (Translation Lookaside Buffer) shootdown is a process in computational architecture where a TLB cache is invalidated, and the CPU is forced to rebuild the cache. This generally occurs when there is a change in the page tables, which are responsible for mapping virtual addresses to physical addresses. TLB shootdowns are necessary to guarantee coherency between caches in a multiprocessing system, where multiple CPUs may be caching the same memory addresses. It can cause a temporary slowdown as the CPU rebuilds the cache, but it ultimately ensures data consistency and prevents errors.
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