memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory caching system typically used to increase web application performance by calls to the database.
Originally developed by Brad Fitzpatrick in 2003, memcached allows you to make better use of your server's memory. With memcached, all your servers are looking into the same virtual pool of memory. This means that a given data item is always stored and always retrieved from the same location in your web cluster.
Typical users run memcached to make a website faster, by reducing calls to the database for oft-requested data. While many users have memcached running alongside a webserver process, some have also implemented it on dedicated machines solely intended to be memcached servers.