No, it doesn’t. Putting aside that there is an entire field of clockless designs, asynchronous logic, free-running clocks, etc.
You should think of this as “when the cpu is processing an instruction, what does it need to track to dispatch and retire it?” Designing to a click tick is one version and kind of where things were in the 1970s. It’s an educational model.
You should think of this as “when the cpu is processing an instruction, what does it need to track to dispatch and retire it?” Designing to a click tick is one version and kind of where things were in the 1970s. It’s an educational model.