what is System Clock - Basic Programming Knowledge

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.