How is a microprocessors speed measured?

Answer 1

Typically, microprocessors (like the ones found in computers), measure their speed in hertz. A hertz is the measurement of a cycle in a second. So, 10 hertz means 10 cycles per second.

In computing, a cycle (or, more specifically, a clock cycle) is the basic unit of measurement that the CPU uses to carry out instructions given to it by software. Therefore, in a CPU running at 900MHz, 900 million clock cycles will occur per second.

Software sends commands to the processor called, instructions. These commands are the basis for how all programs run on a computer and are handled by the computer in a very complicated manner.

However, a computer running at 3GHz, for example, is not performing 3 billion instructions per second. Some instructions take multiple cycles to complete and some can even have other instructions in the same cycle simultaneously.

To complicate matters further, it is not accurate to say that a higher speed processor is better than another one at a lower speed. Certain AMD processors, for example, run at lower speeds than comparable Intel processors of their family but, because they use different architecture, perform at the same (and, sometimes, higher) performance levels than CPU's with high clock speeds.

Also, processors with some sort of Hyper-Threading technology or, better yet, multiple cores (like Intel Core 2 Duo processors) will be rated at lowered speeds than other CPU's in their price range but, because of more than one (virtual) processor is running parallel to the others, more instructions are performed per clock cycle.

There are also a few more factors to consider but this is the gist of it.

Answer 2

The CLOCK speed (Frequency) is measured in GHz (Not GHs)

The PERFORMANCE speed (Actual processing power) is measured in MiPs / MFLOPS.

Answer 3

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