|Red Hat Linux 9: Red Hat Linux System Administration Primer|
|Prev||Chapter 3. Bandwidth and Processing Power||Next| Often
known as CPU power, CPU cycles, and various other names,
processing power is the ability of a computer to manipulate
data. Processing power varies with the architecture (and clock
speed) of the CPU — usually CPUs with higher clock speeds and
those supporting larger word sizes have more processing power
than slower CPUs supporting smaller word sizes. Here are the two
main facts about processing power that you should keep in mind:
Processing power is fixed Processing power cannot be stored
Processing power is fixed, in that the CPU can only go so fast.
For example, if you need to add two numbers together (an
operation that takes only one machine instruction on most
architectures), a particular CPU can do it at one speed, and one
speed only. With few exceptions, it is not even possible to slow
the rate at which a CPU processes instructions. Processing power
is also fixed in another way: it