What factors determine the power and speed of microprocessor chips?

Answer 1

There are several aspects which touch completely different aspects of processor design. For instance:

• Manufacturing process (e.g. "32 nm" process)
• Voltage, currents and resistance (depend on process)
• Clock speed (depends on all above, e.g. "1200 MHz")
• Available cooling (limits clock speed)
• Instruction set design (some instruction sets are faster than others)
• Number of processor cores (more cores means that individual cores work slower than a single core would)

There are even more factors, but most of them are design-specific (like slow bus clock or memory clock).

Answer 2

It all comes down to processor architecture. CPUs are designed and operate on a synchronization signal. This signal, known as a clock signal, takes the form af a mathematical square wave. They first calculate the maximum time that electrical signals can move in various branches of a CPU's many circuits. This depends on the datapaths and gate design. Then designers can then select an appropriate period for the clock signal. CPU manufactures usually downgrade the processors clock speed/signal before it's release.

Answer 3

what factors determine the speed of the microprocessor