Performance

CPU Ticks and Vim Performance CPU ticks are the heartbeat of your computer. Understanding how they work is crucial for understanding why Vim is so fast and why other editors are slow. What is a CPU Tick? The Clock Cycle 1 2 3 4 5 // Every CPU instruction takes a certain number of clock cycles mov eax, 1 // 1 clock cycle add eax, ebx // 1 clock cycle cmp eax, 0 // 1 clock cycle jne loop_start // 1-3 clock cycles (branch prediction) A CPU tick is one clock cycle of the processor. Modern CPUs run at billions of ticks per second (GHz). ...