clock gating
Clock gating is one of the power-saving techniques used on the Pentium 4 processor. To save power, clock gating refers to activating the clocks in a logic block only when there is work to be done. From the earliest days of the Pentium 4 processor design, power consumption was a concern. The clock gating concept isn’t a new one; however, the Pentium 4 processor used this technology to a large extent. Every unit on the chip has a power reduction plan, and almost every Functional Unit Block (FUB) contains clock gating logic.
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Also called clock rate, the speed at which a microprocessor executes instructions. Every computer contains an internal clock that regulates the rate at which instructions are executed and synchronizes all the various computer components. The CPU requires a fixed number of clock ticks (or clock cycles) to execute each instruction. The faster the clock, the […]
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Same as a cycle, the smallest unit of time recognized by a device. For personal computers, clock ticks generally refer to the main system clock, which runs at 66 MHz. This means that there are 66 million clock ticks (or cycles) per second. Since modern CPUs run much faster (up to 3 GHz), the CPU […]
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The process used on some older 486 computers to triple the internal processing speed of the CPU while maintaining the manufacturer’s original clock speed for I/O transfers. In most cases, clock-tripling would normally yield a lower than 100 percent overall system performance boost (e.g., 30 to 70 percent), not an actual tripling of the clock […]
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A computer, software product, or device that functions exactly like another, better-known product. In practice, the term refers to any PC not produced by one of the leading name-brand manufacturers, such as IBM and Compaq.
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(1) To finish work on a data file and save it. (2) In graphical user interfaces, to close a window means to exit an application or file, thereby removing the window from the screen.