Units of Measure in Computing

Learn about how computer features are measured and compared!

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Computers are digital. This means that they operate on numbers, be it photos, music, or text
documents; everything within a computer is represented as a number, and all operations are some
form of arithmetic.
In this article we’ll go over the most important measures of these numbers.

Data representation and storage

It all starts with a bit (the binary digit), which makes up the smallest unit of data for computers.
Being a binary value, this unit can only have one of two values: 0 or 1, usually to represent if an
electronic signal is on or off.
All data on the computer is represented in this binary notation. For example, the number 228 can
be represented as 11100100 in binary, and a lowercase j can be represented as 01101010 in the
ASCII encoding standard. These groupings of 8 bits are so common that it has a special name,
a byte.
Bytes serve as the more common unit that a person may come across, usually with unit prefixes
to represent more workable amounts of data:
Value Name (Abbreviation) Example
1000 Bytes Kilobyte (kB) A typical email (~2kB)
10002 Bytes Megabyte (MB) A novel (~1.5MB) or 1 song (~5MB)
10003 Bytes Gigabyte (GB) A 1080p movie (5GB)
10004 Bytes Terabyte (TB) Entire major libraries
10005 Bytes Petabyte (PB) All the data held by a major tech company
Measuring storage performance
These file sizes lead into the importance of storage performance. If hard drives only had a speed
of 1 megabyte per second (MBps), then the example song above would take 5 seconds to load
before playing! No user would consider that acceptable!
Luckily, modern drives are much faster than that. The storage of most devices today are solid
state drives. For portable devices such as phones, they are usually able to read files at about 1500
MBps and write new files at 500 MBps. Desktop devices are able to reach read and write speeds
of over 5000 MBps!

Special types of storage

While these speeds can be very fast, there is a special type of short-term storage, Random Access
Memory (RAM), that is used for intermediate storage of values and is even faster! The speed of
these types of storage is typically around 20,000 MBps! Much faster than any type of long term
storage!
However these numbers only cover sequential throughput. Throughput is the total amount of data
that can be transferred during a given amount of time. Another important measure is latency, the
amount of delay before that transfer of data begins. This is helpful when many small files need to
be transferred and the data seeking and accessing processes needs to be repeated many times.
Here is where RAM truly shines; newer devices usually have latency of around 10 nanoseconds,
while even the fastest of solid-state drives (SSDs) have latency times of a few microseconds, or
almost 1000 times slower!

Measuring Internet performance

These types of data speeds don’t apply to just storage devices. It is true for any appliance that
transfers data.
Internet bandwidth and latency are measured the same way. However, instead of representing the
speed of a specific device, measures of Internet devices consist of the entire “pipe” that attempts
to bring the data to a device.
Everything from the speed of the server providing the data, the miles of cables connecting it to
an Internet service provider (ISP), and all of the similar connections until it reaches the desired
device make up this measure. Most importantly, these speeds are decided by the slowest device
along the entire chain. Even if a consumer owns the fastest routers and computers, if the server is
an ancient turtle connected with shoestring to the Internet, the entire connection will be slow.

Measuring computational performance

All this data brought to the computer needs to be processed by the central processing unit (CPU).
Each CPU has a clock speed for determining how quickly it can do computations. This is
commonly about 3.5GHz or 3.5 billion operations per second, and will likely stay around that
number for the foreseeable future to physical limitation in the durability of silicon.
Therefore, a more important measure going forward is the number of cores a CPU contains. Each
core within a CPU can do one computation at a time. Therefore a CPU with four cores can
simultaneously do four times as many computations as a CPU with one core. So need to make a
computationally heavy task four times faster? Just get a processor with four times as many cores!
For well-threaded programs it’s really that simple.
Graphical processing units (GPUs) are similarly measured to CPUs, as they are both devices
focused on computations. However, with the GPU’s different goal of computing graphics comes
different implementations. They tend to have many more computational cores (up to 80!), but
with much slower clock speeds (around 2GHz).

Measuring electricity usage

One thing all these devices have in common is their hunger for power. This energy is measured
in watts and differs based on how powerful the device is; more powerful devices tend to use
more energy.
This is an important measure because over time the cost of electricity can eclipse the cost of the
actual device. So much so that it is common for servers to be completely replaced by newer
models not because of speed improvements, but because of improvements in power
consumption.
Power consumption has other effects as well. All of the energy taken in by a device is dissipated
as heat, so more powerful devices will typically need complex cooling solutions to best maintain
performance.

Objectives achieved
Great work on making it to the end of this session Here is what we learned:
 Throughput is the total amount of data that can be transferred in a given amount of time.
 Latency is the amount of delay before that transfer of data begins.
 The smallest unit of data is the bit, and the performance of any data transfer, be it long-
term storage devices, short-term RAM, or Internet devices is measured in the throughput
and latency of this data.
 Both CPUs and GPUs have similar measures for computation performance. Each is made
up of cores that can do one operation at a time, and these cores have set clock speeds that
determine how often they can perform these operations.
 The energy devices use is measured in watts. The greater the wattage, the greater the
amount of heat the device creates. Electricity costs can be a substantial part of the cost
over the lifetime of the device.

Clock speed of CPU’s key specifications

The performance of your CPU — the “brain” of your PC — has a major impact on the speed at
which programs load and how smoothly they run. However, there are a few different ways to
measure processor performance. Clock speed (also “clock rate” or “frequency”) is one of the
most significant.2

If you’re wondering how to check your clock speed, click the Start menu (or click the Windows
key) and type “System Information.” Your CPU’s model name and clock speed will be listed
under “Processor.”

What Is Clock Speed?

In general, a higher clock speed means a faster CPU. However, many other factors can come into
play, as well.
Your CPU processes many instructions from different programs every second. Some of these
instructions involve simple arithmetic, while others are more complicated. The clock speed
measures the number of cycles your CPU executes per second, measured in GHz (gigahertz).

In this case, a “cycle” is the basic unit that measures a CPU’s speed. During each cycle, billions
of transistors within the processor open and close . This is how the CPU executes the
calculations contained in the instructions it receives.

Frequency is more operations within a given amount of time, as represented below.

A CPU with a clock speed of 3.2 GHz executes 3.2 billion cycles per second. (Older CPUs had
speeds measured in megahertz, or millions of cycles per second.)

Sometimes, multiple instructions are completed in a single clock cycle; in other cases, one
instruction might be handled over multiple clock cycles. Since different CPU designs handle
instructions differently, it’s best to compare clock speeds within the same CPU brand and
generation.

For example, a CPU with a higher clock speed from five years ago might be outperformed by a
new CPU with a lower clock speed, as the newer architecture deals with instructions more
efficiently.

Recent features like the Intel® Thread Director allow the latest gen Intel processors to
intelligently distribute workloads to multiple cores. That’s one reason why newer processors
often outperform older ones on benchmark tests even when they have similar clock speeds.

Within the same generation of CPUs, a processor with a higher clock speed will generally
outperform a processor with a lower clock speed across many applications. This is why it’s
important to compare processors from the same brand and generation. The K-series of Intel®
Core™ processors, for example, denotes a set of chips that are unlocked and allow for
overclocking, indicating that they can achieve more ambitious clock speeds than their peers in
the same generation.

For more information on how to interpret Intel® Core™ processors by their naming conventions,
read our guide.

How Does Clock Speed Affect Gaming?

Before the advent of multi-core CPUs, clock speed was viewed as the key spec for comparing
single-core processors. Today, it’s taken into consideration alongside many other factors, like:

 The number of cores the CPU contains

 The size and efficiency of the CPU cache
 The amount of power the CPU consumes

The impact of clock speed on an individual game depends on the game’s engine and the tools
used to create it. For example, FromSoftware’s Elden Ring uses a proprietary game engine that
leans heavily on single core performance3. On the other hand, Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty:
Modern Warfare 2 is designed to take full advantage of core multi-threading. This allows the
game to hit impressive performance benchmarks even when using older, slower processors —
provided it has enough cores to work with.3

These examples show that specific benchmarks are the best way to assess CPU performance in a
particular game engine. However, clock speed remains a good general guide to the relative
performance of processors within a product family.

What Does Turbo Frequency Mean?

Intel processor specifications list both Max Turbo Frequency and Processor Base Frequency. The
processor base frequency refers to the its regular operating point, while the Max Turbo
Frequency refers to the maximum speed the processor can achieve using Intel® Turbo Boost
Technology.

Intel Turbo Boost Technology enhances clock speed dynamically to deal with heavy workloads.
It works without requiring any installation or configuration by the user. The technology judges
the amount of heat the system can tolerate, as well as the number of cores in use, and then boosts
clock speed to the maximum safe level.
Base Processor Frequency and Max Turbo Frequency are two core performance metrics that
refer to different usage scenarios. For high-intensity gaming, the turbo frequency is the more
important metric.. Given adequate cooling, this is the speed your CPU will operate at when
dealing with heavy gaming workloads such as traveling through a highly detailed environment,
or calculating AI behavior on an enemy turn in a strategy game in the most CPU-intensive titles.

How Do You Adjust Your CPU Clock Speed?

The term “overclocking” refers to speeding up the CPU clock for more processing power. As
mentioned above, Intel CPUs with a “K” in the name have an unlocked “multiplier” for easy
overclocking when paired with a motherboard chipset that supports overclocking.

Overclocking can yield improved FPS4, even for high-end CPUs like the latest gen Intel®
Core™ processors. Intel® Speed Optimizer provides one-click overclocking for all Intel®
processors. This means experts and beginners alike can optimize overclocking performance
safely.

What is an unlocked multiplier?

The CPU multiplier (sometimes called the “CPU ratio”) expresses the CPU’s performance as a
multiplier of the CPU Base Clock (or BCLK) speed. A CPU multiplier of 46 and a base clock of
100 MHz, for example, results in a clock speed of 4.6GHz. Note that the BCLK in the system’s
BIOS settings is not the same as the “Processor Base Frequency” referred to in Intel specs — the
latter refers to the overall CPU clock speed when Intel Turbo Boost Technology isn’t activated.

The BCLK sets not only the speed of the CPU, but also the speed of memory, PCIe bus, CPU
cache, and more. It’s easier for overclockers to simply adjust the CPU multiplier than to change
the BCLK, which can cause instability by affecting many components at once.
Why Does Clock Speed Matter?
CPU clock speed is a good indicator of overall processor performance. Though applications like
video editing and streaming are known to rely on multi-core performance, many new video
games still benchmark best on CPUs with the highest clock speed.

Clock speed is a useful metric for comparing processor models in the same generation. When
selecting a processor for a new gaming computer, it provides at-a-glance information about the
general performance of products in the same lineup, like the latest gen Intel® Core™ Processor
family. For more specialized use cases, individual benchmarks are usually more appropriate.

seconds instructions clocks seconds

= × ×

program program instruction clock

The Performance Equation

The performance equation analyzes execution time as a product of three factors that are
relatively independent of each other.

This equation remains valid if the time units are changed on both sides of the equation. The left-
hand side and the factors on the right-hand side are discussed in the following sections.

The three factors are, in order, known as the instruction count (IC), clocks per instruction (CPI),
and clock time (CT). CPI is computed as an effective value.

Performance Equation
Instruction Count Effective Values Clocks Per Instruction Clock Time Example Improvements
The Performance Equation

The performance equation analyzes execution time as a product of three factors that are
relatively independent of each other.

Instruction Count

Computer architects can reduce the instruction count by adding more powerful instructions to the
instruction set. However, this can increase either CPI or clock time, or both.
Clocks Per Instruction

Computer architects can reduce CPI by exploiting more instruction-level parallelism. If they add
more complex instructions it often increases CPI.

Clock Time

Clock time depends on transistor speed and the complexity of the work done in a single clock.
Clock time can be reduced when transistor sizes decrease. However, power consumption
increases when clock time is reduced. This increase the amount of heat generated.

Instruction Count

Instruction (IC) count is a dynamic measure: the total number of instruction executions involved
in a program. It is dominated by repetitive operations such as loops and recursions.

Instruction count is affected by the power of the instruction set. Different instruction sets may do
different amounts of work in a single instruction. CISC processor instructions can often
accomplish as much as two or three RISC processor instructions. Some CISC processor
instructions have built-in looping so that they can accomplish as much as several hundred RISC
instruction executions.

For predicting the effects of incremental changes, architects use execution traces of benchmark
programs to get instruction counts. If the incremental change does not change the instruction set
then the instruction count normally does not change. If there are small changes in the instruction
set then trace information can be used to estimate the change in the instruction count.

For comparison purposes, two machines with different instruction sets can be compared based on
compilations of the same high-level language code on the two machines.

Clocks Per Instruction

Clocks per instruction (CPI) is an effective average. It is averaged over all of the instruction
executions in a program.

CPI is affected by instruction-level parallelism and by instruction complexity. Without

instruction-level parallelism, simple instructions usually take 4 or more cycles to execute.
Instructions that execute loops take at least one clock per loop iteration. Pipelining (overlapping
execution of instructions) can bring the average for simple instructions down to near 1 clock per
instruction. Superscalar pipelining (issuing multiple instructions per cycle) can bring the average
down to a fraction of a clock per instruction.

For computing clocks per instruction as an effective average, the cases are categories of
instructions, such as branches, loads, and stores. Frequencies for the categories can be extracted
from execution traces. Knowledge of how the architecture handles each category yields the
clocks per instruction for that category.
Clock Time

Clock time (CT) is the period of the clock that synchronizes the circuits in a processor. It is the
reciprocal of the clock frequency.

For example, a 1 GHz processor has a cycle time of 1.0 ns and a 4 GHz processor has a cycle
time of 0.25 ns.

Clock time is affected by circuit technology and the complexity of the work done in a single
clock. Logic gates do not operate instantly. A gate has a propagation delay that depends on the
number of inputs to the gate (fan in) and the number of other inputs connected to the gate's
output (fan out). Increasing either the fan in or the fan out slows down the propagation time.
Cycle time is set to be the worst-case total propagation time through gates that produce a signal
required in the next cycle. The worst-case total propagation time occurs along one or more signal
paths through the circuitry. These paths are called critical paths.

For the past 35 years, integrated circuit technology has been greatly affected by a scaling
equation that tells how individual transistor dimensions should be altered as the overall
dimensions are decreased. The scaling equations predict an increase in speed and a decrease in
power consumption per transistor with decreasing size. Technology has improved so that about
every 3 years, linear dimensions have decreased by a factor of 2. Transistor power consumption
has decreased by a similar factor. Speed increased by a similar factor until about 2005. At that
time, power consumption reached the point where air cooling was not sufficient to keep
processors cool if the ran at the highest possible clock speed.

Problem Statement

Suppose a program (or a program task) takes 1 billion instructions to execute on a processor
running at 2 GHz. Suppose also that 50% of the instructions execute in 3 clock cycles, 30%
execute in 4 clock cycles, and 20% execute in 5 clock cycles. What is the execution time for the
program or task?

THE END