 - The gigahertz, abbreviated GHz, is a unit of
alternating current (AC) or electromagnetic (EM) wave frequency
equal to one thousand million hertz (1,000,000,000 Hz).
The gigahertz is used as an indicator of the frequency
of ultra-high-frequency (UHF) and microwave EM signals and also, in some
computers, to express microprocessor clock speed.
An EM signal having a frequency of 1 GHz has a
wavelength of 300 millimeters, or a little less than a foot. An
EM signal of 100 GHz has a wavelength of 3 millimeters, which is
roughly 1/8 of an inch. Some radio transmissions are made at
frequencies up to hundreds of gigahertz. Personal computer clock
speeds are increasing month by month as the technology advances, and reached the 1 GHz point in March of 2000, with a processor from AMD, closely followed by a 1 GHz Pentium 3 from Intel.
Other commonly-used units of frequency are the kHz, equal to 1,000 Hz
or 0.000001 GHz, and the MHz,
equal to 1,000,000 Hz or 0.001 GHz.
| LAST UPDATED: |
27 Nov 2003
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