Cyclebabble

1 definition found

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  cyclebabble
       
           Advertising raw {clock speed}, instead of {bus
          speed}.
       
          {IBM} uses raw clock speed as the speed of the computer.  In


          the {IBM PC} and {IBM PC XT}, the clock is divided by 4 to
          produce the 4-phase bus clocks.  Thus a 4 MHz IBM XT really
          runs at 0.895 MHz, because that 4 MHz was really 3.58 MHz
          which gets divided by four.
       
          A {Tandy} {Color Computer} ran at exactly the same speed, but
          clock speed was specified as bus speed, 0.895 MHz, leaving the
          impression that it was 4 times slower.  Actually it ran a
          little faster with a more efficient {instruction set}.  If the
          actual clock frequency had been specified on a {CoCo 3}, it
          would have been 14.32 MHz, although the bus speed was still
          0.895 MHz.  That high speed also generated video, color, and
          {hidden refresh} timing.
       
          100 MHz computers are running at bus speeds of around 25 MHz.
       
          (1997-02-13)