Over the 40 years since Steve Jobs launched the Macintosh 128K on 24 January 1984, Macs have been continuously improving their performance, as have all computers, of course. There are many ways that has been achieved, and they have come to process data ever faster. This article looks at some of the techniques that have been used to accelerate the CPUs of Macs over those years, and how these have changed. Faster CPUs execute instructions in synchrony with a clock whose frequency determines the ra...