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Electrical & Electronics Engineering vocabulary · Digital Electronics and Microcontrollers

Clock signal

Meaning in electrical & electronics engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In electrical & electronics engineering, clock signal means: A regular square wave that sets the timing of a digital circuit so that all its parts act in step. Its frequency, for example 16 MHz, sets how fast a processor runs.

In Turkish: saat sinyali, clock

How it is used

Usually just called the clock. It comes from a crystal, an oscillator or a PLL, and engineers talk about clock frequency, clock source, clock speed and the clock line of a bus such as SPI or I2C. Data is often read on the rising or falling edge of the clock.

Example sentences

  1. The clock signal on the SPI bus is 8 MHz, so keep the traces short.

  2. Without the external crystal there's no clock signal, so the chip falls back to its internal oscillator.

Common collocations

  • clock frequency
  • clock source
  • rising edge
  • external clock
  • clock line
  • microcontrollerA small computer on a single chip, with a processor, memory and input/output peripherals. It runs firmware to control devices such as appliances, sensors and motors.
  • SPIShort for Serial Peripheral Interface: a fast synchronous serial bus with a clock line, two data lines and a separate chip-select line for each device. It is used for flash memory, displays and ADCs.
  • I2CA two-wire serial bus, with a data line (SDA) and a clock line (SCL), that lets a microcontroller talk to many chips, each with its own address. It is common for sensors, EEPROMs and small displays.
  • frequencyThe number of times a signal repeats its cycle in one second, measured in hertz (Hz). Mains electricity in Turkey has a frequency of 50 Hz.
  • waveformThe shape of a signal when its voltage or current is drawn against time, such as a sine, square, triangle or sawtooth wave.

More terms: Digital Electronics and Microcontrollers

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