Caching of an immutable buffer that has its data and address prevented from changing during the lifetime of the immutable buffer. A first computing entity maintains a cache of the immutable buffer and has a strong reference to the immutable buffer. So long as any entity has a strong reference to the immutable buffer, the immutable buffer is guaranteed to continue to exist for the duration of the strong reference. A second computing entity communicates with the first computing entity to obtain a strong reference to the immutable buffer and thereafter read data from the immutable buffer. Upon reading the data from the cache, the second computing entity demotes the strong reference to a weak reference to the immutable buffer. A weak reference to the immutable buffer does not guarantee that the immutable buffer will continue to exist for the duration of the weak reference.