How do Semi-Conductors work?
Semiconductors are mainly classified into two categories: Intrinsic and Extrinsic. An intrinsic semi-conductor is very chemically pure and has poor conductivity where as an extrinsic semi-conductor is an improved intrinsic semiconductor with a small amount of impurities added by a process, known as doping which improves the conductivity of a semi-conductor.
What is a semi-conductor?
A semi-conductor is a substance that has a conductivity between that of an insulator and of most metals, either due to the addition of an impurity or because of temperature effects. Devices made of semiconductors, notably silicon, are essential components of most electronic circuits.
Overclocking
Overclocking is the process of pushing the components in your computer harder and faster than they are manufactured to go. If you buy a slower, lower cost processor and overclock it you can operate it at the same speeds as a more expensive processor. Even tough overclocking makes your computer components more powerful it can be dangerous. If you overclock your computer yo should make sure that it is properly ventilated and the power supply is supplying enough power.
Cooling
Fastest Clock Speeds
When overclocking it is essential to have proper cooling and care. When you overclock it allows the processor to do more equations per second but the processor also produces extra heat. If you fan and or cooling system is not adequate you can freeze, lock up or even burn your computer processor.
Power Supply
When overclocking you should make sure you have at least a mid range power supply. When you over clock with a low quality power supply it might not deliver clean voltages and put extra strain on the power regulation components of the motherboard effectively decreasing the lifespan of the motherboard.
- Currently the highest recorded clock rate of a production processor is 5.5 GHz. This clock rate was on an IBM zEC12 processor.
- The Guinness record for the fastest processor is made by AMD. They used a bulldozer based chip and overclocked it 8.308 GHz
What different factors influence the performance of a computer processor?
Video
CPU Cache
Clock Speed
FSB Speed
- The clock speed on computer processors is measured in megahertz (MHz) or Gigahertz (GHz). This measurement is the speed at which a processor can execute the instructions it is given
- This means that the larger the clock speed of your processor the faster it will process data and vice versa.
- The computer cache is used by the CPU to reduce the time to access memory. The cache is small, fast memory that recalls frequently used data.
- When the CPU needs to read or write memory it first checks the cache for a copy of the data. If the data is indeed in the cache it immediate writes to the cache which is faster than writing to a Serial ATA drive or a Solid State Drive.
- The FSB is the interface that limits the rate at which data can be transferred to and be processed by the CPU.
- The FSB on the CPU then determines the rate at which data can then be distributed to the rest of the system
- The other parts of the computer that limit transfer speed include the Clock Speed, The Motherboard Chipset and the RAM Speed
Instruction Set
Heat and Dissipation
Bandwidth
- When a computer processor runs too hot they can lock up freeze or even burn themselves up
- It is important to have an appropriate cooling system to keep you computer running safely
- If your processor tends to run hot it can slow down your computer so you don't get the full potential out of your processor
- Every processor has a set of built in instructions or code that tell the processor how to execute the duties its given
- You cannot edit or change or update this code. The architecture of the processor determines how many cycles are required to complete a task
- Although you cannot change edit or update depending on the processor in your computer the code can make it either faster or slower. This varies with the architecture of each processor
- The bandwidth of a computer processor is measured in bits and determines how much data your computer can process in one instruction
- The bandwidth can be compared to a highway. If you are measuring how fast data can be transferred on a highway the bandwidth would be the limit of how fast it can be transferred
- Currently you can buy computers with a bandwidth limitation of 32 bits and 64 bits
by Josh C.