If computer clocks max out somewhere around 5GHz, how is it possible for 100Gbit internet to exist? How does the computer possibly transfer that much data per second?
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A processor does not transfer one bit every clock cycle. In general it performs one step of a task every clock cycle. That step could be, “transfer these 100,000 bits from the internet adapter chip into the memory chip”, as long as the internet adapter chip, the memory chip, the CPU, and the motherboard have the bandwidth needed. In many cases, one of those components do not have the bandwidth needed, in which case the 100Gbit internet is wasted.
What you should be asking about is how the internet adapter chip works. After all, that’s what’s plugged into your internet cable or wifi antenna and converts the 1’s and 0’s from the internet provider into a format that the CPU can work with. And in that case, the answer is much more complicated, but it has to do with compression on the internet cable (wifi can’t get to 100Gbit) which allows it to send more than one bit of data for each clock cycle. The actual clock speed is lower than 5GHz.
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