Our daughter, Emma, went to camp for the first time this summer. Her week of camp was filled with the usual activities like archery, riflery, horse back riding, as well as the unusual, synchronized swimming.
Synchronized swimming is synchronized by rhythm. There is a rhythm to the strokes and movements, so that a pair or team of swimmers can perform in perfect harmony.
Emma’s synchronized swimming group consisted of fifteen girls. They began their routine by diving into the pool simultaneously. They used the eggbeater kick to scull into a circle while counting silently to keep a synchronous beat. They moved with a tap-stroke, tap-stroke from the circle to a group of three lines with five girls across. In unison the group would submerge to do a clam stroke. Emma was “the girl in the middle,” so at the time to resurface she would yell, “AAAhhh” underwater as a signal. Being, “the girl in the middle” may have been her favorite part of camp.
Coordinating fifteen girls ages seven to fourteen in the water is a difficult job….”AAAhhh!” It may be even more difficult than synchronizing billions of bits, but synchronizing bits is exactly what a computer clock must do. Inside a computer the clock is the “girl in the middle.”
A computer has multiple chips and many circuits performing tasks simultaneously. Some parts of the computer are multiplying 32- bit numbers while other circuits are moving bits from one place to another. When out of sync a fast circuit might be trying to hand off bits to a slower circuit before it is ready. If there is a backlog at one spot the whole system will be as slow as its slowest part.
To maximize efficiency and speed each processing device is set with a computer clock to coordinate handling of the data. Transfer, reading and processing of data occur in a synchronized way.
The computer clock creates the rhythm for the processor. The clock is a quartz-crystal that has piezoelectric properties. Crystals that exhibit the piezoelectric effect become electrically polarized when mechanically strained. The quartz is a thinly sliced crystal between two electrodes. When electricity is passed through it it vibrates at a very specific frequency. The frequency of the vibrations and, therefore, the frequency of the pulses (the beat) are directly related to the thickness of the crystal.
The computer microprocessor has a clock that vibrates at a particular frequency that becomes the clock speed for that processor. The frequency is described in megahertz (MHz), millions of pulses (beats or vibrations) per second or Gigahertz (GHz), billions of pulses per second.
The processor then performs one instruction or activity per clock pulse. To increase speed some processors perform more than one activity per clock pulse, but it is always a specifically defined number in coordination with other parts of the circuit.
The clock speed generates the tempo for the processor, so that all instructions are executed synchronously.
The early Intel processors like the 8088 had clock speeds of 4.77 MHz. Now, you can buy a very affordable computer with a Pentium III chip that will operate at clock speeds of 1 GHz.
So, the quartz crystal sets the clock speed. The clock speed sets the tap-stroke, tap-stroke synchronized rhythm of the microprocessor.
When you sit down to your computer you can tap your foot like Fred Astaire “Puttin’ on the Ritz” if you have the Megahertz to be “Computin’ With a Zip”….
Have you seen the well-to-do
Up and down Park Avenue
On that famous thoroughfare
With their noses in the air
High hats and narrow collars
White spats and lots of dollars
Spending every dime
For a fast time
Now, if you’re slow
And you don’t know where to go to
And you don’t know where speed sits
Computers on the Fritz
Check the types who have a clock
Chips in sync, got the quartz
Piezoelectric
Computers with a zip
Pentium III has been a million dollar trooper
Trying hard to clock in maximum tempo
Super-duper
Come, let’s see what Intel tells us
Buy the PC that Gateway sells us
Billions of bits
Per second on the chips
Tips you need when being computer happy
Get the Gigahertz to make it zappy
Very snappy
You’ll declare it’s simply topping
To be there and hear them swapping
Smart bits
Clocking on the chips