Mhz

What exactly is Mhz. I mean, when you see a cpu that is .400, 2.1, 1.5 4.47, Mhz, what does that mean? I know the more Mhz the processor has the faster it is. But how?

1 Hz is defined as 1 "something" per second. X Hz is X "somethings" per second. In the case of processors, it's talking about clock cycles. The prefix before Hz is just so you don't have to say 2,000,000,000 Hz.

"...The 8088 processor was an 8 bit processor, handling data in 8 bit chunks (a single character). Its clock rate was 4.77Mhz..."

So does this mean that a 4.77Mhz processor can only handle a single char at a time? And what is meat by "handle" a single char at a time?

The 8088 had 16bit registers but only an 8bit bus thus it could load one 8bit item at a time into a register for operations, (actually even these early processors could work on "register pairs"). The speed at which the processor is clocked does not influence the width of the processors registers.

In a very simple processor, (the 8088 is very crude by todays standards), a 2MHz processor will load an 8bit value twice as fast as a 1MHz processor.

Do you know of any links that explain how a processor works?

If you Google for ASM tutorials, many of them will explain the basics of a processer before diving into the crazy MUL ax, bx stuff.

>>> Do you know of any links that explain how a processor works?

Generally if you want to know how stuff works, it's worth checking www.howstuffworks.com, in this particular case, this page is probably a good start.

I had that link at one time before I formatted my HD and I lost it. I learned a lot from that site. Thanks for the link!