Hello.
I know that the clock determines how often can a CPU work on an instruction. Basically, for each tick, the CPU will either fetch an instruction, decode it, or execute it, correct? It’s basically responsible for synchronizing this entire process. The amount of clock cycles per second is measured in hertz and indicates a CPU’s performance, for example, 3 GHz.
However, I’ve just learned that RAM also has a clock rate, for example, 3000 MHz. What is the difference between the clock rate for the CPU and the clock rate for the RAM Doesn’t the CPU’s clock rate determine how often a CPU can work on an instruction (fetch-decode-execute)? And fetching is basically loading the data from RAM, so where does the RAM’s clock rate come into place, or what exactly does it do? If the processor is constantly fetching instructions from the RAM, why isn’t the RAM’s clock rate same as the CPU’s?
Thank you!
In: Technology
RAM and CPU clocks are independent. That way each of them can operate at their ideal speed. DRAM memory cells for instance are much slower than the memory and logic gates on the CPU. But the real challenge to use RAM is how fast the interconnect can run. This interconnect is the printed circuit board wires from the CPU to the RAM and the respective interface circuits. The RAM clock is designed to optimize this timing.
On the CPU there are independent clock generation circuits for CPU and RAM. The two systems are synchronized through special synchronization circuits that are on the CPU.
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