What do megahertz and gigahertz measure

In the case of computer clock speed, one hertz equals one tick per second. The clock speed of computers is usually measured in megahertz MHz or gigahertz GHz. One megahertz equals one million ticks per second, and one gigahertz equals one billion ticks per second.

You can use clock speed as a rough measurement of how fast a computer is. However, you cannot use clock speed to compare computers with different types of processors or computers with different amounts of memory. This is document aekt in the Knowledge Base. One kilohertz represents 1, rotations per second. One megahertz represents 1 million rotations per second. One gigahertz represents 1 billion cycles per second.

Clock speed, which is also measured in hertz, refers to synchronous circuit clock frequency, for example, a CPU. One clock cycle lasts only 1 nanosecond and toggles between 0 and 1. Modern and non-embedded CPUs may have a single clock cycle of less than 1 nanosecond.

CPU megahertz usually refers to clock rate, frequency or speed. Clock rate is gauged by a crystal oscillator which generates highly accurate and unwavering electrical and clock signals, stabilizes receivers and frequencies, and tracks time. The oscillator circuit brings its crystal a small amount of electricity every nanosecond, which is measured in hertz. By: Justin Stoltzfus Contributor, Reviewer.

By: Satish Balakrishnan. Dictionary Dictionary Term of the Day. Natural Language Processing. One MHz is mathematically equivalent to 1,, hertz. A value in MHz can also be converted to GHz.

However, one has to remember that megahertz is a smaller unit of measurement than gigahertz. Hence, megahertz is related to gigahertz in the following way:. MHz is commonly used to measure the frequency of microprocessors. It is also infrequently used to measure radio waves, television broadcasting, bandwidths of hi-speed digital data transmissions, etc.

MHz is frequently used to measure spread spectrum signals. Gigahertz and Megahertz are both used as clock speed measurement units. They have very similar uses as both these units are used to measure the cyclical frequencies of processors, electromagnetic waves , frequency of sound waves, etc.

However, they also have certain very conspicuous differences. One GHz is mathematically equivalent to 10 9 hertz. It is a relatively greater unit of measurement than MHz, as it measures the billions of cycles completed by the processor per unit time. Contrarily, 1 MHz is mathematically equivalent to 10 6 hertz.