FIT 100
© Copyright 1999-2000
University of Washington
Computers Use Resources
vEach operation of a
computer (each step in the Fetch/Execute Cycle) takes a small amount of
time
;As a rough approximation,
assume 1 instruction per clock tick
;A 500MHz computer does
500,000,000 instructions in a second
vGenerally, the
number of instructions needed to solve a problem determines how much time it will
take …
;A 10 billion
instruction computation takes 20 seconds
vNetworks have
bandwidth limits: 100 Mb/sec
vEvery part of a
computation takes memory, too.
Every
letter or digit takes 1-2 bytes
Every
instruction takes 4 bytes
Every
integer takes 2 or 4 bytes
Every
decimal number takes 4 or 8 bytes
… And everything
is limited by the
speed of light