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The clock rate of the first generation of computers was measured in hertz or kilohertz (kHz), the first personal computers (PCs) to arrive throughout the 1970s and 1980s had clock rates measured in megahertz (MHz), and in the 21st century the speed of modern CPUs is commonly advertised in gigahertz (GHz).
Running a processor at high clock speeds allows for better performance. However, when the same processor is run at a lower frequency (speed), it generates less heat and consumes less power. In many cases, the core voltage can also be reduced, further reducing power consumption and heat generation. By using SpeedStep, users can select the ...
The purpose of overclocking is to increase the operating speed of a given component. [3] Normally, on modern systems, the target of overclocking is increasing the performance of a major chip or subsystem, such as the main processor or graphics controller, but other components, such as system memory or system buses (generally on the motherboard), are commonly involved.
The performance increase of the 80286 over the 8086 (or 8088) could be more than 100% per clock cycle in many programs (i.e., a doubled performance at the same clock speed). This was a large increase, fully comparable to the speed improvements seven years later when the i486 (1989) or the original Pentium (1993) were introduced.
The dynamic power (switching power) dissipated by a chip is C·V 2 ·A·f, where C is the capacitance being switched per clock cycle, V is voltage, A is the Activity Factor [1] indicating the average number of switching events per clock cycle by the transistors in the chip (as a unitless quantity) and f is the clock frequency.
Every program or task that runs on a computer system occupies a certain amount of processing time on the CPU. If the CPU has completed all tasks it is idle. Modern processors use idle time to save power. Common methods are reducing the clock speed along with the CPU voltage and sending parts of the processor into a sleep state.
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In early processors, the TSC was a cycle counter, incrementing by 1 for each clock cycle (which could cause its rate to vary on processors that could change clock speed at runtime) – in later processors, it increments at a fixed rate that doesn't necessarily match the CPU clock speed.