In computers, storage devices (such as memory devices) are used to store various data involved in the execution of software or to perform other tasks, such as communications tasks, management tasks, and so forth. Data structures, such as tables, stored in storage devices often have fixed sizes. Examples of fixed-size data structures include lookup tables used in cache memory subsystems, lookup tables used for database applications, and so forth.
With a fixed-size data structure, an algorithm conventionally has to be provided to explicitly select a data item in the data structure to remove (to eject the data item) so that space is freed up to enable addition of a new data item to the data structure. An example of such an algorithm is a least recently used (LRU) replacement algorithm. However, having to provide an algorithm to explicitly eject (remove) a data item from a data structure adds complexity to a system.