Prefetching in computer science is a technique for speeding up fetch operations by beginning a fetch operation whose result is expected to be needed soon. Usually this is before it is ''known'' to be needed, so there is a risk of wasting time by prefetching data that will not be used. The technique can be applied in several circumstances: * Cache prefetching, a speedup technique used by computer processors where instructions or data are fetched before they are needed * Prefetch input queue (PIQ), in computer architecture, pre-loading machine code from memory * Link prefetching, a web mechanism for prefetching links * Prefetcher technology in modern releases of Microsoft Windows * prefetch instructions, for example provided by ** PREFETCH, an X86 instruction in computing * Prefetch buffer, a feature of DDR SDRAM memory * Swap prefetch, in computer operating systems, anticipatory paging

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