Signals pass down the wires at the speed of light in metal, approximately half the speed of light in vacuum. The transistorized switches that perform the information processing in a conventional computer are like empty hoses: when they switch, electrons have to move from one side of the transistor to the other. The 'clock rate' of a computer is then limited by the maximum length that signals have to travel divided by the speed of light in the wires and by the size of transistors divided by the speed of electrons in silicon.
In current computers, these numbers are on the order of trillionths of a second, considerably shorter than the actual clock times of billionths of a second. The computer can be made faster by the simple expedient of decreasing its size. Better techniques for miniaturization have been for many years, and still are, the most important approach to speeding up computers.
Wires and transistors both possess capacitance, or C--which measures their capacity to store electrons--and resistance, R--which measures the extent to which they resist the flow of current.
The product of resistance and capacitance, RC, gives the characteristic time scale over which charge flows on and off a device. When the components of a computer gets smaller, R goes up and C goes down, so that making sure that every piece of a computer has the time to do what it needs to do is a tricky balancing act.
Technologies for performing this balancing act without crashing are the focus of much present research. So to make computers faster, their components must become smaller. At current rates of miniaturization, the behavior of computer components will hit the atomic scale in a few decades.
At the atomic scale, the speed at which information can be processed is limited by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Recently researchers working on 'quantum computers' have constructed simple logical devices that store and process information on individual photons and atoms.
Atoms can be 'switched' from one electronic state to another in about 10 15 second. Whether such devices can be strung together to make computers remains to be seen, however. IBM Fellow Rolf Landauer notes that extrapolating current technology to its 'ultimate' limits is a dangerous game: many proposed 'ultimate' limits have already been passed.
The best strategy for finding the ultimate limits on computer speed is to wait and see what happens. Summers is a professor of electronic engineering technology at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah. His answer focuses more closely on the current state of computer technology: "Physical barriers tend to place a limit on how much faster computer-processing engines can process data using conventional technology.
But manufacturers of integrated-circuit chips are exploring some new, more innovative methods that hold a great deal of promise. Smaller traces mean that as many as million transistors can now be fabricated on a single silicon chip.
Increasing transistor densities allow for more and more functions to be integrated onto a single chip. A one-foot-length of wire produces approximately one nanosecond billionth of a second of time delay. These include the specification of your graphics card and whether it has dedicated memory to handle your computer's visuals, and the types of ports you have available to connect external devices.
All computers will run faster when they are running less software simultaneously. In addition to the applications you may be using, such as graphics packages, word processors and Internet browsers, various other programs usually run in the background. These can include Internet security packages, instant messaging utilities and software for printers and scanners. Adding more memory RAM to your computer will allow you to run more concurrent programs without slowing the machine down.
Viruses, worms and other malware can all slow down your computer. Internet security software, especially on computers running Microsoft Windows, are crucial to preventing infection. Ensure the software is kept up to date with recent virus definitions, and that you frequently use the program to fully scan your computer. Keeping your computer well maintained is key to ensuring it performs well. The central processing unit CPU is effectively your computer's brain.
This chip executes all processes and instructions in your computer, responding with the appropriate action depending on what order you give it, such as opening a program. The speed of your CPU, known as clock speed, is the number of cycles the chip performs in one second. The faster the CPU runs, the more processes it can run at any given time. The processor's cache is the onboard memory, used to store information so the processor can access it quickly.
The more cache your CPU has, the more data it can store and the faster it can run processes. Also known as the system bus, the front side bus is what connects the CPU to the rest of the components attached to the motherboard.
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