A sequence of accesses to memory repeatedly overwriting the same cache entry. This can happen if two blocks of data, which are mapped to the same set of cache locations, are needed simultaneously.

For example, in the case of a direct mapped cache, if arrays A, B, and C map to the same range of cache locations, thrashing will occur when the following loop is executed:

        for (i=1; i<n; i++)
                C[i] = A[i] + B[i];

Cache conflict can also occur between a program loop and the data it is accessing.

See also ping-pong.