Author: Dr. Nigel Woodford

Introduction

Many of you may have read the recent article in the inquirer that reports on a patent that was granted to Intel for an overclocking detection and prevention device. With all due respect to our fellow journalists (they did post the story first), this article was a little lacking on the clear technical interpretation that we know our readers crave. As an alternative, you could fight your way through "United States Patent 6,535,988 - March 18, 2003", but to save you the trouble we here at Fastsilicon.com have done it for you. Herein we present a layman's guide to the patent that has got some of the overclocking community up in arms, and tell you why it's not all that bad. To begin our explanation, it is appropriate to explain how the system clock relates to the processor, and what "overclocking" is all about.