Help Needed, Processor And Mhz

[exo_body]

hey, im doing ict for gcse and was wondering could anyone explain what exactly does 550Mhz tells you about a processor. i searched google but i dont understand what it means as the sites keep talking about cycles...?
anyone help please!

[vivitron 15]

http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=290076

that may offer some insight - theres a load of crap but a section which may help you with regards cycles etc.

[ilw]

550MHz when quoted for a cpu (processor) is the internal clock frequency of the chip. The clock for a chip essentially synchronises all the actions that the chip does, i.e. each part of the cpu (there are many parts to it) does one action for each tick(cycle) of the clock. The clock is essentially something that just goes high -> low -> high -> low forever (in a square wave). Clock signals are used to coordinate actions in nearly all non-trivial digital electronic systems.
If you want to know more about clock signals in electronics try looking up "synchronous design" in google with a couple of keywords about the specific topic.

[atiVidia]

think of a sine wave. the higher the frequency, the more ups and downs. and thus, more is completed witnin X time.

i.e. a 900mhz fone send worse quality sound then a 2400mhz (2.4ghz) fone. the 2.4ghz can cram more info into X time than the 900mhz fone can.


btw:
hz = hertz.
m = mega = 1,000,000
g = giga = 1,000,000,000.

nothing is recorded in kilohertz anymore (none that i can think of at the moment, at least). and nothing has hit the terahertz (1,000,000,000,000) range yet.


@ other FSThardwareworld members: please double check my figures...

[james_bond_rulez]

yup the figures are right

except we capitalize the letters

giga = G

mega = M

and it's bytes = B

not bits = b

[GrubMe]

Is it confusing you?
exo_body?

[vivitron 15]

been thinking about this - isnt there an IT gcse revision guide you could use? this would have it better explained than we have

[atiVidia]

oh well

[exo_body]

lol, thanks every so much!yeah i sorta understand it....lol but like its only a 2 mark question so i aint gonna worry to much over it.

ah i couldnt be bothered with a revision guide for it, cause im already guaranteed a C in it cause i got full marks in coursework and like looking at past papers they dont seem overly hard

thanks again for the help!

[3RA1N1AC]

this explanation might be a bit more layman-friendly:

The hertz (symbol Hz) is SI the unit of frequency. It is named in honor of the German physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz who made some important contributions to science in the field of electromagnetism.

One hertz simply means "one (event) per second"; 100 Hz means "one hundred (events) per second", and so on. The unit may be applied to any periodic event – for example, a clock might be said to tick at 1 Hz. The reciprocal of frequency is time (period); a frequency of 1 Hz is equivalent to a period of 1 second, a frequency of 1 MHz to a period of 1 microsecond. In older writings, e.g. pre-WWII articles about radio transmissions and its electronics, the older but similar unit cycles per second (cps) is seen, along with related multiples kilocycles, megacycles, and so forth.

in the case of CPUs, the event is called a "cycle," so one hertz is equivalent to one cycle per second. a 550 megahertz CPU operates at a frequency of 550 million cycles per second. the efficiency of the CPU is determined when you consider the cycles per second in combination with how much work it can accomplish per cycle (each CPU design can do more work or less work per cycle than other designs).