How do computers do math so quickly?
The Speed of Switches
How do computers do math so quickly?
You press a button and instantly your computer tells you that 8,472 times 9,361 equals 79,314,792. It doesn't pause. It doesn't count on its fingers. How does it do math faster than you can blink?
Inside your computer are billions of tiny switches called transistors, each smaller than a speck of dust. These switches can flip on or off millions of times per second. When a switch is on, that's a 1. When it's off, that's a 0. Every number, every word, every picture — your computer stores it all as patterns of 1s and 0s.
