1MHz

[Big.Wayne]

Is one megahertz really made up of one million hertz?

How do you quantify something like that?

 

[Big.Wayne]

Sorry lol!

ummmm, how is it known that a million hertz make up a megahurtz? . . . i.e how do you measure it?

What academic realm deals with this kinda thing?

 

[Big.Wayne]

Imagine turning the light in your room on and off a million times in a single second...

Cool, hope you good at maths!

using your example then . . . . how many times would the light get switched on & off in one second on an Intel® Core™ i7 processor clocked to 4.0GHz . . . . and would Hyper-Threading affect this?

 

[Big.Wayne]

you been on the drink wayne?

Lol no sorry just trying to get my head around the numbers . . . not my strong-point so just putting it out here!

 

[Big.Wayne]

Start from 1Hz, its just a cyclical event an oscillation that repeats once per second

Hola!

You nOObed me out straight away . . . . oscillation

The frequency is the inverse of the time interval

Ok I'll get my coat!

All the major Engineering and Physics disciplines deal with frequencies

Thanks for that . . . I actually understood that sentence!

For a cpu clock its a square wave, use an oscilloscope.

oscillation & oscilloscope? . . . . square wave!

Ok! . . . . obviously not a subject I'm gonna be very good in, thanks for the effort!

 

[Big.Wayne]

Thanks you reiyushin, can you express that figure in words please!

Also can someone else please double check reiyushin got the maths correct!

Thank you for the help!

 

[Big.Wayne]

I have refered to fornowagain in the past as professor fornowagain so now you know why!

I am simple trying to understand a bit more about frequency, if I am understanding what is being said a processor cycle or oscillation is when that pink line has travelled up across the line and returned back down, is this correct? i.e that is 1 Hertz?

off topic:

It has been suggested to me by a qualified holistic nutritionalist that there may be health implications for someone like myself who spends a great deal of time surrounded by high speed computers, of course one may laugh at such a suggestion but I personally like to look into a situation and understand the variables before I scoff, sadly my strength is not mathmatics so I'm grateful to my forums friends for the help!

 

[Big.Wayne]

I'm not sure how you would count HT - as its not like having another full physical core...

Ok for the purposes of this example lets just say it's a full core . . . so eigth cores running at 4GHz basically . . . how many light bulbs flick on and off!

What is the figure?, I can't work it out myself and I need the answer expressed in words as I do not understand large numbers!

 

[Big.Wayne]

Like Kribby said i believe it would be 4 billion per core so if you want to apply that to 8 cores then that's 8 x 4 billion which will be 32 billion.

Wow!

I had no consciousness of that! . . . I kinda *slackly* thought the answer would have been 8 x 4000 = 32,000 or Thirty Two Thousand cycles a second . .

32 billion *events* in a single second is totally mind blowing!

 

[Big.Wayne]

1 cycle = one complete wave going both above and below the line.

Thanks again!

Weather this high frequency radiation is harmful or not is another kettle of fish however...

Indeed Mike hence why I appended it as Off Topic:

Usually a computer is in a big metal case which shields you from and high frequency radiation

Hmmm . . .

I've been experimenting with some digital audio amplifiers, which use a variable switching frequency. These usually operate around 650Mhz, which is a little below 1Mhz, and when I use these without a case they can cause interference with an AM radio! Inductors are used to filter out the switching frequency from the speakers also, otherwise the interference would be a lot worse

Thanks again Mike, that is interesting info . . .

There is also some BIOS options I believe which help with these high speed signals [CPU Spread Spectrum] . . . once again it's something myself as an overclocker doesn't fully understand so following general consensus it gets disabled as it's meant to help in achieveing a faster/more stable overclock? . . . I will have to retest that as I'm not sure if it does help an overclock . . .

Off Topic:

So this qualified holistic nutritionalist/healer I recently had a session with suggested it would be beneficial to my health and general well-being if I placed a Crystal in between myself and the high speed oscillator, of course I laughed but being a reasonable kinda guy I agreed to trial it . . . . she gave me what I think is a Quartz Crystal which I took home and immediately plopped ontop of my beloved Antec 300 scratching it lol, a couple of blobs of BluTack later It's doing its thing!

Couple of observations, I was a bit worried to see parts of the Crystal fell off after a week or so, nothings touched it so either it's a old Crystal and would have done that anyway sitting on a shelf or perhaps it didn't like the physical vibrations coming from the moving parts (fans etc) *or* it's absorbing billions of something that otherwise would have been flying into me!

To effects that have taken place is I generally feel more upbeat and happy and certain overclocking errors I was having have gone away, could all be a placebo effect but I hope to find out more soon!

 

[Big.Wayne]

Looking at that trace, start from the left. The first point is the 'clock rise'. Imagine a transition to a '1' state. Then it holds, so a steady state. Then the 'clock fall' so a transition to the '0' steady state. That's one clock cycle. If you count, its 5 divisions in the x direction from start to finish. So 5 x 5ms ~ 25ms ~ 0.025s which is 40Hz.

That square wave is a little different from a clock trace as you'd position the trace above the x-axis with only positive voltage.

Thanks Professor, good explanation!

I'm interested in this oscilloscope, it has been suggested by a few overclockers in the past that it's possible to improve your overclock if you have one as it enables you to see your overclock, if there is any truth in that I could have really used one when I was learning about GTL Tweaking!

How much does an entry level oscilloscope cost then?

 

[Big.Wayne]

As for the crystal taking a dive, I'm not really sure weather it's case vibrations or not... It could just be case vibrations. In which case, try attaching a normal rock or stone, and see if it does the same thing!

Good ideal batman! . . . I suppose to evaluate it properly I should have tested it on a system with no moving parts i.e passive and physical vibration free!

Thanks for the idea!

As for CPU spread spectrum, I've no idea what it does either, so I normally turn it off.

It seems to be when we don't understand something we either leave it be or follow the pack, I don't know why we turn it off? . . . can't say I've ever been happy to do something just because someone says do it, far prefere to do my own testing and draw my own conclusions . . . only problem with that is there is so many god damn options on a modern PC it does take a rather long time to work through the variables!

Clever stuff

Hey Mike,

Am I right in thinking that Crystals were used in some radios and similar devices? . . . If so what was their function?

are they still used or have they been replaced by something else?

 

[Big.Wayne]

I think the main use of a crystal in electronics is as a clock. They vibrate at a fixed frequency which the electronics than then convert into time, this is why digital watches say 'quartz' on the face - they've got a vibrating piece of crystal inside

cool, I never new a piece of crystal vibrates

Your the only person I heard say that who isn't a lentil munching holistic healer lol!

You used to see crystals like the silver one below for fixed base clocks, eg 25Mhz.

ah, that silver thing that says 143F3HB is a Crystal? wrapped in a casing to protect it I imagine?

You probably could help with clock signals if you knew the probe points etc. But the kit needed, e.g. 5GHz sampling scope would be a lot. Like £6k last time I looked.

Hmm ok so a bit out of my price range atm! . . . however I am getting interested in this so I will find out if there any part-time courses or similar that give access to equipment . . . some people may be able to deal with raw science, figures, calculators etc but I need more visual means to grasp complicated/technical subjects!

Thanks to everyone that replied for helping me with the mathmatics and to improve my knowledge . . . I never realised just how powerful modern computers had become so working out that one million lightbulbs gets turned on & off @ 1MHz is a real eye opener . . . thinking of it as a lightbulb getting switched on and off makes me think of Morse-Code . . . and as a *wild* guess I am thinking you could transmit the entire works of William Shakesphere using Morse-Code in a second! (or two of three!)

 

[Big.Wayne]

Probably better sticking to binary and a .txt file over Ethernet!

010010000110010101101100011011000110111100100000010000010110110001101100

Haha thanks for that 5abr3 . . . made me chuckle!

I've only studied a little binary so the morse code was a more real world thought, I suppose who-ever invented/worked on binary code was familiar with Morse?

If the four cores were employed at 100% at 4GHz it will be the same as a single chip being employed at 100% at 16GHz

Ok, sorry to all for confusing the example, I should have probably just used a simple [email protected] scenario . . .

So theres four cores, each core is operating at 4.0GHz

1MHz = One million Hz
1GHz = One billion Hz

4GHz = Four billion Hz

x4 = Sixteen billion Hz

So in one second on a loaded quad core @ 4.0GHz the CPU has oscillated sixteen *BILLION* times . . . . over the course of one minute thats 960 *BILLION* cycles . . . one hour would be fifty-seven thousand *BILLION* cycles and finally . . . . to get the *Magic* 8-Hour Prime95 Stability Screen your asking your SuperComputer (Quad@4GHz) to perform how many perfect fault free cycles?

Seriously I can't do the maths guys! . . . I'm not even sure if I got the above bit right, if I can understand the above scenario and the resulting figure I would be happier . . . I've never needed to know about numbers apart from salary $$$ so my comprehension is a bit fuzzy above 100K

There's also this American figure vs the UK figure which confuses me . . . help us out fellas!

 

[Big.Wayne]

Off Topic Insight:

No offense intended Wayne, but how do you have 11'000+ posts on an overclocking forum and not know what Hz are etc?

Hi Amraam,

It's a fair question and no offence taken! . . . I am a complete non-academic and entered the computing scene in 1995 as a photographer who wanted an Apple-Mac to learn about digital imaging . . . however the £1500 price tag was prohibitive so a good friend of mine who was a fuzzy-logic/neural network expert suggested he could build a PC for just £350 . . . he dragged me around a London computer fair and bought a few hundred quid of new and used components before we travelled back to his flat to get the thing built . . . . sadly after two/three hours both himself and an other friend had failed to get the newly constructed budget PC to boot! . . . I then reluctantly had no choice but to dive in an get hands on as a trouble-shooter because my £350 had turned into a large beige box that didn't do very much . . . there was no internet, no overclockers.co.uk forums etc . . . so much harder back then!

I have always acquired knowledge on a Need-To-Know basis, I'm not one to spend time learning something if I cannot then *apply* that newly acquired knowledge to a situation . . . I've never needed to know how a MHz subdivides and my only grasp of mathmatical figure are directly related to money . . . £100/One Hundred Pound, £1000/One thousand pound etc

My first computer was a Compaq 66MHz so I have always thought of the minimum denomination in MHz (Megahurtz) and have never encountered a setting or one situation that deal with Hz (Hurtz) . . .

The overclocking arena is filled with people from all walks of life and not soley just computer-science academics . . . what I lack in theory I hope is offset against 15 years of hands-on, practical experience!

I never studied photography either, it's just another one of those vocational things . . . back in 1983 while my friends were working hard at school on their maths O-Levels (no computer in schools back then) I was out starting a career as a Musical-Press Photographer travelling around London and the U.K taking pictures of as many rock-bands as possible! . . . I didn't know what silver-halide was or how it worked, no clue how depth-of-field related to aperture etc . . . all I knew was how to load 35mm film into a camera, how to focus and how to blag myself photo-passes! . . . I got a *huge* archive of work from the 80's that is waiting to be digitized and hopefully made into an exhibition and a book, kinda lots of black & white photos like this:

Moral of the story is, You can study more and do less . . . or you can study less and do more, knowledge for knowledge sake is overrated IMHO . . . i just think you need enough to be confident in what you do . . . keywords being *confident* and *do* . . .

The only reason I made this thread was because some information is reaching me about possible health-implications to people that live/work in close proximity to modern computers caused by some *Vibrations*, I like to make my own mind up about these things so I needed to know how many *actions* were taking place inside a processor, even if they are on a tiny, tiny level I consider a machine that Pulsates/Oscillates at up to 16 *BILLION* times a second to be something that may well have an effect on the Human Body . . . if there is any truth in this it's not gonna be made public knowledge is it? . . . at least not through the conventional media (BBC News, Custom PC etc! ) . . .

Anyway, that's all for now, just thought I'd paint a picture for you and although I have not studied computer sciences I would like to think i have earned my place in the OcUK community with hands-on technical support and trouble-shooting advice which is a SkillSet you could never acquire from a book or calculator! . . . as individuals we all have our weak spots but we often don't like to admit it, at least not in public . . . it's am ego thing I think but sadly that blocks the path to actually learning stuff as people will be scared to ask what is obviously a really simple question as others may scoff or snigger! . . . I think the best teachers in life are the humble ones . . . and humility is a great but very misunderstood virtue . . . I think this quote sums it up nicely!

"The reason why seas and oceans are great, is because they're lower than the rivers and streams" - Ksmail

 

[Big.Wayne]

Got me all paranoid now, thinking

No mate!

It wasn't anything terrible like that . . . it was to do with electromagnetic fields? and how it effects the operator on a Energetic level, this would be things like a weakened Immune System, Fatigue, Chronic Fatigue, problems sleeping, depression/moods etc . . .

if 1MHz is One-Million Cycles then I've got a Triple-Core sitting here now Oscillating 10.8 *BILLION* every single second . . . in the time it has taken me to write this post alone I have been exposed to the fallout from 648 *BILLION* ripples of electromagnetic radiation . . . ouch!

 

[Big.Wayne]

I'd be tempted to round it up to 2 Teracycles.

I really like that idea btw, I am not familiar with that word but I think it sounds cool!

Is it possible to knock-up a spread sheet to work that out!

Core Number = [Manual Input here]
Core Frequency = [Manual Input here]
Teracycle Duration= [Auto Answer Here]

Prime95 Teracycle Stability Test lol . . . there will be a race to see who can complete it the quickest! . . . the person with the most cores running at the highest frequency would win right? . . . so the faster your computer was the shorter duration you would need to test it?

Weird Science!