I'm reading Computer Organization and Design Sixth edition by Patterson and they define clock speed as this:
Almost all computers are constructed using a clock that determines when events take place in the hardware. These discrete time intervals are called clock cycles (or ticks, clock ticks, clock periods, clocks, cycles). Designers refer to the length of a clock period both as the time for a complete clock cycle (e.g., 250 picoseconds, or 250 ps) and as the clock rate (e.g., 4 gigahertz, or 4 GHz), which is the inverse of the clock period.
What is the difference between clock cycle and clock period then?
My book says the clock period is the length of the clock cycle... but it also says the clock cycle to be the time for one clock period. Isn't this circular?
How I understood it was that a clock cycle was a pulse of the CPU, and the clock period was the length of time of that pulse. But this is a well known text so I think I'm the one who doesn't understand.