Read before over clocking
Index
[.]System clock and Clock speed
[.]increasing clock speed
[.]limits on clock speed
Every computer has its own system clock, a quartz controlled oscillator that supplies a timing signal at a fixed rate. Other timing signams are derived from this oscillator. these timing signals are used to regulate the rate of which an instruction is executed and to synchronise the operation of various computer compomnents. speeds are represents using megahers [MHz] or gigaherts [GHz]. Processors are designed to execute a instruction at a given frequency, this is known as the clock speed of the processer. a processor executes a particular intruction in a fixed number of clock ticks or clock cycles. some instructions require more clock ticks than others. the system clock supplies the clock ticks that a proccessor requires to execute an instruction. The system clock frequency is raised to the rate that the processor requires by frequency-multiplying circuits. this is done inside a processor so its called an internal clock.
Increasing clock Speed
all other things being equal, a processor with a clock speed or frequency of 2 GHz should execute the same machine code program twice as fast as a processor from the same family with a clock speed ov 1GHz (obviously). this makes sense when we assume that each machine code instruction is execute in one clock cycle or tick, in both processors. as the 2GHz processors clock speed is half the duration of the 1GHz processors clock speed, it will take half the time to execute and intstrucion.
Limits on clock speed
This might sound really stupid but the main limit on clock speed is the factor of heat. heat is a big problem when it comes to processor engineers, and are now stuck on how to reduce this factor. some processors will end up frying if they are not supplied with a water cooling system, computers are becoming much more expensive now because of the cooling systems. some people think that simply overclocking a computer will dramatacally increase the speed. well in some ways yes it will, until you figure out that you've not got a good enough cooling system so it doesn't frazzle. think before over clocking.
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-Dj JoShZoR
