Intel and AMD processors and system designers are aware of this and have created solutions to improve the L2 cache's performance. The L2 cache was commonly found on the motherboard in Pentium (P5) class systems and required to run at motherboard speed. The first significant advancement was made by Intel, which moved the L2 cache from the motherboard to the CPU and initially ran it at the same speed as the main processor. Intel produced the cache chips, which were housed in a single chip housing next to the main CPU die. Because this was too expensive, Intel began employing cache chips from third-party vendors like as Sony, Toshiba, NEC, and Samsung with the Pentium II. Intel put these chips alongside the CPU on a circuit board since they were delivered as complete packaged chips rather than raw die. Because of this, the Pentium II was developed as a cartridge rather than a chip.

The speed of the available third-party cache chips was one issue. The fastest ones on the market were 3ns or faster, indicating a speed of 333MHz or less. Because the CPU was being driven at higher speeds, Intel had to operate the L2 cache at half the processor speed in the Pentium II and early Pentium III processors because it was all the commercially available cache memory could manage. AMD followed suit with the Athlon processor, which had to reduce the L2 cache speed to two-fifths or one-third of the main CPU speed in some variants to keep the cache memory speed below that of commercially available 333MHz processors.

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