I was told that the CPU Clock is like a doorbell that informs the CPU about an upcoming program instruction. Each time an instruction is finished by the CPU, the clock can be “rang” again.
I understand that the CPU needs to take some steps to process an instruction. When all of these steps are completed, is this known as one “CPU cycle” and the amount of cycles per second is the clock rate measured in hertz? So would a clock rate of 3 GHz actually mean that the CPU can perform 3 billion instructions per second?
I find the CPU cycles and the clock rate a little difficult to understand. Because I’ve assumed that one cycle equals one processed instruction so 1Hz = 1 instruction but I’ve also read online that one instruction doesn’t always take one cycle.
So what exactly is one CPU cycle then and how does this correspond to the clock rate?
In: Technology
>So would a clock rate of 3 GHz actually mean that the CPU can perform 3 billion instructions per second?
This means it can perform a maximum of 3 billion instructions if they’re really simple – moving contents of a data cell, addition, incrementations, etc. However, many tasks are more complex.
>I’ve also read online that one instruction doesn’t always take one cycle.
As an analogy, imagine a regular 8-digit calculator. You add two small numbers together – get a result immediately, easy.
However you can use it to add numbers that are bigger than 8 digits by splitting them in parts, like columnar addition in school. This will require running the addition operation multiple times and remembering to carry the one – you’re looking at several operations, extra memory cells, and overall more time spent.
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