The speed of a computer is determined by many elements, some related to hardware and some related to software. In hardware, speed is improved by giving the electrons shorter distances to traverse to complete a circuit. Since the first CPU was created in the early 1970s, engineers have constantly worked to figure out how to shrink these circuits and put more and more circuits onto the same chip. And this work has paid off – the speed of computing devices has been continuously improving ever since.
The hardware components that contribute to the speed of a personal computer are the CPU, the motherboard, RAM, and the hard disk. In most cases, these items can be replaced with newer, faster components. In the case of RAM, simply adding more RAM can also speed up the computer. The table below shows how each of these contributes to the speed of a computer. Besides upgrading hardware, there are many changes that can be made to the software of a computer to make it faster.
|
Component |
Speed measured by |
Units |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
|
CPU |
Clock speed |
gHz |
The time it takes to complete a circuit. |
|
Motherboard |
Bus speed |
mHz |
How much data can move across the bus simultaneously. |
|
RAM |
Data transfer rate |
MB/s |
The time it takes for data to be transferred from memory to system. |
|
Hard Disk |
Access time |
Ms |
The time it takes before the disk can transfer data. |
|
Data transfer rate |
M Bit/s |
The time it takes for data to be transferred from disk to system. |
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