Now in principle, the clock frequency as the CPU speed computer hardware part 9: what we know makes the CPU. But who determines when the next command can be processed? So that no mess is created, everything runs within the CPU synchronized with a predetermined frequency. The clock determines when a new command can be edited. That is, in turn, that no command (or part of a complex command) may take longer than this clock cycle. The first IBM PC in the early 1990s, called in the 7th part of this article series, had a clock rate of 5MHz. Now, that sounds like not too much processing power. If you however clear, what means this number, the thing looks different.

It means that the processor is above five million cycles per second and can handle as many (simple) commands during this time. At one GHz, there are already a billion instructions per second. Of course, there are not only these simple commands, which can be handled completely within a bar. In accordance with part 5 of the article can you imagine that an addition of binary numbers is easier than E.g. a Division. These commands are divided then into multiple clock cycles to unnecessarily delay the faster-working commands.

The clock rates were faster in the early days of PC development. Later, there was a veritable race to higher clock rates among the chip manufacturers. A few years after the turn of the Millennium but got in trouble to leave this rapid development. Including simple physical reasons. Another problem is also that so much of the CPUs was screwed, now entirely different components can slow down the system. While the CPU from 5 MHz to 3 GHz today was clocked, which is in this case an increase of the 600, E.g. the memory became only a fraction faster. Also hard drives were bigger brakes of a PC. “So, that meant that CPUs of but enough power” had, but some not could use these, because they are waiting for other components had to. “A solution to the problem is the parallelization so that multiple commands simultaneously in various pipelines” can be edited. This is but too much in detail. The next article will rotate to a different solution to this problem: the cache memory. See also: computer hardware – understandable conveys – part 1: introduction to computer hardware – understandable conveys – part 2: the real innovations in computer hardware – understood conveys part 3: numbering systems computer hardware – understood conveys part 4: number systems 2 computer hardware – understood conveys part 5: binary numbers computer hardware – understandable conveys – part 6: coding standards computer hardware – understandable 7: the personal computer computer hardware gives – part – understood conveys part 8: the basic structure of the CPU writes the author Michael Sander in his spare time also article pages, where for example sofas can be found cheap.