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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).
CPU time (or process time) is the amount of time that a central processing unit (CPU) was used for processing instructions of a computer program or operating system. CPU time is measured in clock ticks or seconds. Sometimes it is useful to convert CPU time into a percentage of the CPU capacity, giving the CPU usage.
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.
Before standard benchmarks were available, average speed rating of computers was based on calculations for a mix of instructions with the results given in kilo instructions per second (kIPS). The most famous was the Gibson Mix, [2] produced by Jack Clark Gibson of IBM for scientific applications in 1959. Other ratings, such as the ADP mix which ...
For a given CPU core, energy usage will scale up as its clock rate increases. Reducing the clock rate or undervolting usually reduces energy consumption; it is also possible to undervolt the microprocessor while keeping the clock rate the same. [2] New features generally require more transistors, each of which uses power.
For example, a system with an external clock of 100 MHz and a 36x clock multiplier will have an internal CPU clock of 3.6 GHz. The external address and data buses of the CPU (often collectively termed front side bus (FSB) in PC contexts) also use the external clock as a fundamental timing base; however, they could also employ a (small) multiple ...
The gap between processor speed and main memory speed has grown exponentially. Until 2001–05, CPU speed, as measured by clock frequency, grew annually by 55%, whereas memory speed only grew by 7%. [1] This problem is known as the memory wall. The motivation for a cache and its hierarchy is to bridge this speed gap and overcome the memory wall.
The final result comes from dividing the number of instructions by the number of CPU clock cycles. The number of instructions per second and floating point operations per second for a processor can be derived by multiplying the number of instructions per cycle with the clock rate (cycles per second given in Hertz) of the processor in question ...