I am prolific on this forum for asking the most dumb questions, but hey at least i excel at something.
I was reading in an excellent book about computers (Digital Design and Computer Architecture), about an example involving baking cookies, which I can relate to. In it, Ben is putting dough on his only tray, and puts it in the oven and waits for it to bake. Once finished, he takes it out and puts more dough on the tray. In the improved version he has two trays, and when one is baking in the oven he prepares the other in the meantime. This is all jolly. However, when they actually start talking about circuits again, I'm confused..
To me, it's not obvious how adding flipflops to everything is better.. Surely no more work is being done. I can understand that, in the first example (fig 3.58 or "nopipe") the total delay is 9.5 ns and thus the clock cannot tick faster than this signal propagates, and by sticking a flipflop in between (thus "halving" the delay) the frequency can be increased. But it seems like you're fooling yourself thinking this will produce results faster, the flipflop doesn't magically boost the speed of electricity, the signals still have to pass through all the combinational logic?? Can someone explain to me what is going on. I know it's gonna be one of those "oh yes of course, how stupid am I.."-moments but just give it to me, I can take it.
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I am prolific on this forum for asking the most dumb questions, but hey at least i excel at something.
I was reading in an excellent book about computers (Digital Design and Computer Architecture), about an example involving baking cookies, which I can relate to. In it, Ben is putting dough on his only tray, and puts it in the oven and waits for it to bake. Once finished, he takes it out and puts more dough on the tray. In the improved version he has two trays, and when one is baking in the oven he prepares the other in the meantime. This is all jolly. However, when they actually start talking about circuits again, I'm confused..
To me, it's not obvious how adding flipflops to everything is better.. Surely no more work is being done. I can understand that, in the first example (fig 3.58 or "nopipe") the total delay is 9.5 ns and thus the clock cannot tick faster than this signal propagates, and by sticking a flipflop in between (thus "halving" the delay) the frequency can be increased. But it seems like you're fooling yourself thinking this will produce results faster, the flipflop doesn't magically boost the speed of electricity, the signals still have to pass through all the combinational logic?? Can someone explain to me what is going on. I know it's gonna be one of those "oh yes of course, how stupid am I.."-moments but just give it to me, I can take it.
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