OT: trends in L3 cache sizes (latency)

[bogstad-e+AXbWqSrlAAvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Bill Bogstad)]

This isn't really a Linux/Unix specific question, but I'm hoping
people here will have some insight into the question.

I'm looking at problems where I could really use low latency random
access to relatively small (order of megabytes) of data.   DRAM access
times are too slow.   So far my tests show on chip L2/L3 speeds might
be good enough.  It looks like current desktop CPUs have as much as
6Mbytes of L3, while standard server CPUs can be found with as much as
8Mbytes.  Is this an accurate portrayal of the current landscape? Any
idea on what future plans are for the Intel/AMD CPU duopoly in this
area?

Thanks,
Bill Bogstad