clock

Signal in many logic devices used to provide a timebase for orderly transistions from step to step. The speed and way the clock signal is used varies from device to device.

Some low power microcontrollers run on 32kHz clocks and four clock cycles might be needed for each instruction to execute, others might run at 1GHz and process an instruction almost every clock cycle.

Logic and communication devices frequently have a clock input. This input will signal to the device that the controlling circuit wants it to perform the next operation.