What is the processor clock speed?
Historically, the clock frequencyprocessor is the main indicator of the speed of the computer, and in its time even an uneducated person who does not know what the optical disk is different from flexible, could confidently state that the more gigahertz in the car, the better, and no one would argue with him. Today, in the middle of the computer era, this kind of fashion has passed, and developers are trying to go in the direction of creating a more sophisticated architecture, increasing the number of caches and the number of processor cores, but the clock frequency is the "queen" of characteristics. In a general sense, this is the number of elementary operations (cycles) that a processor can produce in a second of time.
It follows that the higher the processor clock speed, the more elementary operations the computer can perform, and, therefore, the faster it works.
The clock speed of the advanced processors variesfrom two to four gigahertz. It is determined by multiplying the frequency of the processor bus by a certain coefficient. For example, the Intel Core i7 processor uses a multiplier of x20 and has a bus frequency of 133 MHz, resulting in a processor clock speed of 2660 MHz.
Modern processors: cache memory and cores
Despite the fact that previously "multi-core" was in thea novelty, today there are practically no single-core processors on the market. And there is nothing surprising in this, because the computer industry does not stand still.
Therefore, it is clear how the clock frequency is calculated for processors with two or more cores.
It is worth saying that there is a widespreada misconception about the calculation of the frequency for such processors. For example: "There is a dual-core processor with a clock speed of 1.8 GHz, hence its total frequency will be 2 × 1.8 GHz = 3.6 GHz, right?". No, it's wrong. Unfortunately, the number of cores does not affect the final clock speed in any way, if your processor worked at 3 GHz, it will work and it will, but with more cores, its resources will increase, and this, in turn, will greatly increase the efficiency.
Do not forget that for the modernprocessor is particularly important cache. This is the fastest computer memory, in which duplicate work information, which requires faster access at a given time.
Since this type of memory is very expensive and laborious inproduction, its values are relatively small, but these indicators are enough to increase the performance of the entire system without changing parameters such as clock frequency.
Maximum processor clock speed and overclocking
No matter how good your computer is,one day it will become obsolete. But do not rush to carry it to the trash and with a spread purse to run to the nearest electronics store. Most modern processors and graphics cards provide additional (in addition to factory) overclocking, and having a good cooling system, you can raise the level of the nominal frequency by 200-300 GHz. For extremals and lovers of large numbers, there is also an "overclocking" calling for squeezing the maximum out of the equipment. Many people involved in such a dangerous business can easily overclock a single-core processor to 6-7 GHz, and some even put a record in 8.2 GHz.
