3 ms·
> Speed of Light > Takes more than a clock cycle for signal to propagate across a complex CPU Wowers, I had never considered that
by mdaniel 5y ago
> Speed of Light
> Takes more than a clock cycle for signal to propagate across a complex CPU
Wowers, I had never considered that
- Koshkin 5y agoWell, that has little to do with the speed of light though, it has more to do with delays due to parasitic capacitances and slow motion of charges that form the conducting channels inside transistors.
- dreamcompiler 5y agoLight travels 1 foot per nanosecond in a vacuum. (Electricity in wires is slower.) A 1 GHz processor has a 1 ns cycle time. So yeah, with multi-GHz clocks the speed of light certainly does matter a lot, and it's one reason why keeping everything on the same chip (whenever possible) is important. Parasitic capacitance and inductance and carrier transport speed are inportant too, but it's not correct to state "it has little to do with the speed of light."
- zekrioca 5y ago1 foot per ns.. that really confuses me.. Why not something simpler such as 300000 km/s? :)