jargon

Backend & systems·Caching and invalidation

the cache filled up and something had to decide which entries get thrown out to make room for the new one.

Eviction policy

Also calledLRU, LFU, cache replacement

The rule a bounded cache uses to choose victims when it is full: least recently used, least frequently used, random, or TTL-ordered. The policy only matters when you are actually at capacity, which is why cache size and eviction rate are the two metrics to look at before tuning anything else. A cache evicting faster than entries are reused is doing work for no benefit.