Historical Milestones and Current Records
The first commercial PC, the Altair 8800 (by MITS), used an Intel 8080 CPU with a clock rate of 2 MHz (2 million cycles/second). The original IBM PC (c. 1981) had a clock rate of 4.77 MHz (4,772,727 cycles/second). In 1992, both Hewlett-Packard and Digital Equipment Corporation broke the difficult 100 MHz limit with RISC techniques in the PA-7100 and AXP 21064 DEC Alpha respectively. In 1995, Intel's P5 Pentium chip ran at 100 MHz (100 million cycles/second). In March 6, 2000, AMD reached the 1GHz barrier a few months ahead of Intel. In 2002, an Intel Pentium 4 model was introduced as the first CPU with a clock rate of 3 GHz (three billion cycles/second corresponding to ~3.0×10−10seconds or 0.3 nanoseconds per cycle). Since then, the clock rate of production processors has increased much more slowly, with performance improvements coming from other design changes.
As of 2011, the Guinness Record for fastest CPU is by AMD with a Bulldozer based FX chip "overclocked" to 8.308 GHz; however, it has now been superseded by the next generation of AMD's Bulldozer based FX chips with a clock rate of 8.429 GHz. As of mid-2012, the highest clock rate on a production processor is the IBM z196, clocked at 5.2 GHz, which was released in June of 2010.
Read more about this topic: Clock Rate
Famous quotes containing the words historical, current and/or records:
“It is hard to believe that England is so near as from your letters it appears; and that this identical piece of paper has lately come all the way from there hither, begrimed with the English dust which made you hesitate to use it; from England, which is only historical fairyland to me, to America, which I have put my spade into, and about which there is no doubt.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A reaction: a boat which is going against the current but which does not prevent the river from flowing on.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)