19
FIT100
Clocks Run The Engine
The
rate a computer “spins around” the Fetch/Execute cycle is controlled by it’s clock
rate
•Current
clocks run 2-3 GHz
•In
principle, the computer should do one instruction per cycle, but often it fails
to
•Modern
processors try to do more than one instruction per cycle, and often succeed
Clock rate is not a good indicator of speed