what is System Clock
February 23, 2019
System Clock
System clock is an
electronic component. It
generates electric signals
at a fast speed. It controls
all functions of the
computer using clock ticks.
These ticks of system clock
are known as clock
cycle and set the speed of
CPU. Computer clock
can tick from millions to
billions times in one second.
The power of a CPU is
determined by the
speed with which it
processes data. System clock is
one of the major factors
that affect a computer
speed. A CPU that has a
higher clock speed can
process more instructions
per second than a CPU
with a lower clock speed.
The speed at which the CPU
executes
instructions is called clock
speed or clock rate.
Processor speed is measured
in MHz and GHz where Hertz means "machine cycles per
second". Megahertz
(MHz) is a million of CPU cycles per second. Gigahertz (GHz) means a
billion cycles per second.
This speed depends on the model of the computer. For example, a
processor of 3.0 GHz can
work at a rate of 3 billion machine cycles per second.
MIPS and
FLOPS
The speed of workstation and
some server computers is measured in MIPS. MIPS
stands for millions of
instructions per second. Workstations perform at 100 MIPS or more
Mainframes perform at 200 -
1,200 MIPS. MIPS is also applied to PCs. Computers can operate up to several
thousand MIPS. Supercomputer processing speed is measured in flops. FLOPS
stands for floating
point operations per second,
Supercomputer applications are often scientific and frequently
perform floating point
operations. Floating point operations accommodate very small or very large
numbers. The speed of modern supercomputers is more than a trillion FLOPS.
The speed of IBM's Blue Gene/L is 70.72 tera flops (tear trillion) per second.
The speed of IBM's Blue Gene/L is 70.72 tera flops (tear trillion) per second.