On May 2, 10:52 pm, Radium wrote:
On May 2, 7:43 pm, MooseFET wrote:

If you want
real processing speed at low power, you should look at using 3 phase
clocks.

The issue is not processor speed, but clock rate.


Noboby gives a darn about clock rate. It is work done per Watt-second
that is the real issue. The 3 phase clock is the lowest number that
has an unambiguous order and thus is the lowest power one with the
property of a reversible order. With a single clock or a two phase
one, the forwards order is always assumed. This greatly limits what
the processor is able to do.

Consider a simple case like this:

You have a list of values that you need to fit a curve to. You know
that a program like this:

for I=1 to 10
print F(I)
next I

would print:

1 17 33 105 117 119 67 52 37 23

Given this you can burn a lot of CPU time figuring out exactly what
F(I) is. With a 3 phase clock, you only need the list, the program to
call the F(I) and a copy of the compiler. You simply invert the C and
B clock lines and then look at source code for F(I) to find out what
the function is. A great deal of energy is saved by doing this.