If chips and discs use electrons to transmit, store and read information, and electrons can move at near light speed, why does a computer function so slowly sometimes? Can’t it process all the information within an indiscernible time duration without causing any visible lag? What causes the clog?
This is not the same scenario as Internet lag, because I searched in this subreddit and found answers that on the Internet, numerous small time intervals across the globe can accumulate and make a great mess, even at light speed. This question is relevant with local computing.
In: Engineering
A CPU is made of billions of little switches. Those switches take time to turn on and off. In a modern CPU that can happen billions of times per second, but if it takes billions of switchings to do a complex calculation then that is still going to take several seconds to complete.
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