What is prefetch? What does it means

I am running Windows XP operating system on my Dell computer. I would like to know what does prefetch means? Why is the prefetch folder needed in Windows operating system? What is the prefetch?

Each time you turn on your computer, Windows keeps track of the way your computer starts and which programs you commonly open. Windows saves this information as a number of small files in the prefetch folder. The next time you turn on your computer, Windows refers to these files to help speed the start process.

The prefetch folder is a subfolder of the Windows system folder. The prefetch folder is self-maintaining, and there's no need to delete it or empty its contents. If you empty the folder, Windows and your programs will take longer to open the next time you turn on your computer.

In computer architecture, prefetching is a technique used in microprocessors to speed up the execution of a program by reducing wait states. It adds a cache to your program in order to provide faster access to needed instructions. Prefetching occurs when a processor requests an instruction from main memory before it is actually needed.

Windows has a feature known as "Prefetch" that stores specific data about the applications you run in order to help them start faster. Prefetch is gathering information before it's needed. In other words, prefetching is an algorithm that creates a cache data and stores that on the hard disk for easy retrieval. It is recommended that you should periodically clear out this data to improve performance.