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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).
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. [2]
The clock signal is produced by an external oscillator circuit that generates a consistent number of pulses each second in the form of a periodic square wave. The frequency of the clock pulses determines the rate at which a CPU executes instructions and, consequently, the faster the clock, the more instructions the CPU will execute each second.
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.
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 ...
As of 2018, many Intel microprocessors are able to exceed a base clock speed of 4 GHz (Intel Core i7-7700K and i3-7350K have a base clock speed of 4.20 GHz, for example). In 2011, AMD was first able to break the 4 GHz barrier for x86 microprocessors with the debut of the initial Bulldozer based AMD FX CPUs. In June 2013, AMD released the FX ...
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.
The increased clock rate is limited by the processor's power, current, and thermal limits, the number of cores currently in use, and the maximum frequency of the active cores. [ 1 ] Turbo-Boost-enabled processors are the Core i3 , Core i5 , Core i7 , Core i9 and Xeon series [ 1 ] manufactured since 2008, more particularly, those based on the ...