many low power (battery operated) computers have zero L2 cache in order to reduce power consumption.
now we proceed further down the memory hierarchy.
should we make the cache faster or bigger?
one possible answer is both.
L1 cache small and therefore fast enough to be clocked at same speed as CPU.
L2 cache big enough to get many accesses that would otherwise go to main memory.
L2 cache reduces the miss penalty when something is not found in L1 cache.