Clock Cycle

Clock

• Square wave alternating between high and low
  • (In reality not exactly a square wave)
• The job of designing digital circuits is easier if their operations are using a clock
• Asynchronous computers are computers that don’t use a clock and don’t work very well; the speed of light isn’t that fast on the scale of computer, so distance matters for signals

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Timing matters in reality; light takes a nonneglible time to propogate. Each cycle must be high for a certain amount of time. The duration of a cycle is determined by the duration of the slowest component’s propogation.