IT Technology

Difference Between System Clock and Real Time Clock

System Clock vs Real Time Clock

Summary: Difference Between System Clock and Real Time Clock is that The processor relies on a small quartz crystal circuit called the system clock to control the timing of all computer operations. While RTC or Real Time Clock is the form of an integrated circuit which is used to keep tracks of current time. The term RTC refers to the devices used in servers, personal computers and embedded systems.

Difference Between System Clock and Real Time Clock

System Clock

The processor relies on a small quartz crystal circuit called the system clock to control the timing of all computer operations. Just as your heart beats at a regular rate to keep your body functioning, the system clock generates regular electronic pulses, or ticks, that set the operating pace of components of the system unit. The pace of the system clock, called the clock speed, is measured by the number of ticks per second.

Current personal computer processors have clock speeds in the gigahertz range. Giga is a prefix that stands for billion, and a hertz is one cycle per second. Thus, one gigahertz (GHz) equals one billion ticks of the system clock per second. A computer that operates at 3 GHz has 3 billion (giga) clock cycles in one second (hertz). The faster the clock speed, the more instructions the processor can execute per second. The speed of the system clock is just one factor that influences a computer’s performance. Other factors, such as the type of processor chip, amount of cache, memory access time, bus width, and bus clock speed.

Real Time Clock

RTC or Real Time Clock is the form of an integrated circuit which is used to keep tracks of current time. The term RTC refers to the devices used in servers, personal computers and embedded systems. Every device which needs to have an accurate time is using RTC. By RTC confusion gets cleared with any other hardware clocks. Other hardware clocks only produce signals which actually governs Digital Electronics. Other Hardware Clocks does not help humans to count time but Real Time Clock does this. You should not be getting confused with with Real-Time computing. RTC shares its three-letter acronym but does not directly relate to the time of the day.

Also Read:

Difference Between Clock Speed and Bus Speed

Difference Between Machine Cycle and Instruction Cycle

Difference Between Clock Speed and Processor Speed

Difference Between System Clock and Bus Clock

Difference Between System Clock and Peripheral Clock

Difference Between System Clock and CPU Clock

Difference Between System Clock and Hardware Clock

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