The patent application is very specific about using a ring oscillator to control the processor clock. Most processors use PLL (phase locked loop) devices to control their clock frequency.
Typically only asynchronous CPUs are clocked by free-running ring oscillators. Almost all CPUs on the market, including embedded CPUs, are synchronous designs and they come in fixed speed grades, which makes PLL clocking very attractive.
Even with PLLs you can vary the clock speed, e.g. when you detect that the chip is too hot or when the work load is low the CPU clock can be scaled down in discrete steps.
A ring oscillator provides a non-discrete (continue) frequency range, but on the downside its clock frequency is very unstable compared to PLLs, which is bad for synchronous designs.
There is also prior art: the early MIPS processor implementations had a free running multiplier, which operated as fast as the silicon would allow, even though the rest of the CPU was clocked at a fixed frequency.
How fast that current flows will be somewhere just a little shy of the speed of light and will be pretty much independant of voltage level.
Depends what you mean. Current flow is expressed in Ampere, which is Coulomb/second. Coulomb is a measure of charge; Current flow then corresponds to the physical movements of electrons in a copper wire. Copper contains some 8.5e22 free electrons per cubic centimeter. Now if you know the diameter of the copper wire you can compute how fast the electrons have to move through the wire to establish the current you had in mind. This can be surprisingly slow! E.g. on the order of centimeters per hour is not unusual! See for an example this page.
Of course the electric field (or electromotive force as you call it) travels much faster through the wire, that is probably what you meant with "a little shy of the speed of light".
Slashdot Mirror
The patent application is very specific about using a ring oscillator to control the processor clock. Most processors use PLL (phase locked loop) devices to control their clock frequency.
Typically only asynchronous CPUs are clocked by free-running ring oscillators. Almost all CPUs on the market, including embedded CPUs, are synchronous designs and they come in fixed speed grades, which makes PLL clocking very attractive.
Even with PLLs you can vary the clock speed, e.g. when you detect that the chip is too hot or when the work load is low the CPU clock can be scaled down in discrete steps.
A ring oscillator provides a non-discrete (continue) frequency range, but on the downside its clock frequency is very unstable compared to PLLs, which is bad for synchronous designs.
There is also prior art: the early MIPS processor implementations had a free running multiplier, which operated as fast as the silicon would allow, even though the rest of the CPU was clocked at a fixed frequency.
In summary: this patent is not worth a lot.
Depends what you mean. Current flow is expressed in Ampere, which is Coulomb/second. Coulomb is a measure of charge; Current flow then corresponds to the physical movements of electrons in a copper wire. Copper contains some 8.5e22 free electrons per cubic centimeter. Now if you know the diameter of the copper wire you can compute how fast the electrons have to move through the wire to establish the current you had in mind. This can be surprisingly slow! E.g. on the order of centimeters per hour is not unusual! See for an example this page.
Of course the electric field (or electromotive force as you call it) travels much faster through the wire, that is probably what you meant with "a little shy of the speed of light".
Paul
Here is a steganographic file system for linux. If you don't know the full path to a file then its existence is hidden.