1. A method of managing memory for optimizing performance of a multifunction portable computing device, said method comprising: receiving at least one cache request from an application being executed by the computing device, said cache request specifying data to be cached; defining a memory area of the computing device for caching during execution of the application, said memory area comprising a plurality of segments, said segments each having a storage capacity available for caching; allocating one or more of the segments for caching the data specified by the cache request; and retrieving cached data from the one or more segments for processing by the application.