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X86 Architecture The CPU is a very small, and complex circuit board, composed of transistors, resistors, metal oxides, which have been layered onto silicon wafers. The speed or the frequency of the CPU is measured in Megahertz (MHz), or Gigahertz (GHz). One megahertz equals to one million clocks or oscillations per second. A CPU can only process data in clock-intervals, meaning that a CPU that can process 10 instructions per one clock cycles, and runs at 500MHz will equal in performance to a CPU that can process 5 instructions per one clock cycle, and runs at 1000MHz, or 1Ghz. A CPU, which is designed for high clock speeds, has to limit the work done in a single clock cycle. If decoding is a lot of work, you need many clock cycles or several stages in a CPU, which result in slower performance due to longer latency's. Until the late 80s, Intel was essentially the only maker of PC microprocessors. However, Intel is facing competition from other manufacturers who produce "Intel-compatible " chips. These chips support the Intel instruction set and are often less expensive than Intel chips. In some cases, they also offer better performance. Two of the principal manufacturers of Intel-compatible chips are Cyrix and AMD. Intel Pentiu