Hello, everyone! I’ve been doing some research into computer hardware lately, and one thing that I keep coming across is this idea that the speed of a processor, while important, isn’t the only thing that affects a computer’s overall performance. I’m having a bit of a hard time wrapping my head around this because I always thought that a faster processor meant a faster computer. Can anyone explain why this isn’t necessarily the case? I’m really interested to learn more about this!
In: 97
I have seen people using the highway analogy, but I think it could be used better. Think of the CPU like a highway, the CPU speed is the speed limit on the highway. The number of cores and the ability to hyperthread the cores are lanes on the highway. Just setting a faster speed limit on the highway won’t mean more traffic can get through. A single lane highway with won’t move as much traffic, even with a 90 mph speed limit, as an 8 lane highway with a 60 mph speed limit. Then there are also factors like the GPU would could essentially add HOV/express lanes for that type of work. And the L1-L3 cache which provide on/off ramps for the highway. The bigger the cache, the more lanes on those on/off ramps.
If you want to just run a single task as fast as possible the single or two lane highway with a fast speed limit could do that well. But most modern applications/games/etc try to multithread everything, so having more cores allows better performance in general as more traffic can move down the highway. And being able to efficiently have that traffic flowing on/off the highway with bigger caches also helps. Having a dedicated express lane with a GPU to do those tasks also means that calculations that could be like semis with huge loads slowing down regular lane, well now they can use the express lanes to offload that work and make it easier for normal traffic to flow on the other lanes.
Latest Answers