What does the 1.00 GHz refer to in the description of my CPU

[bluemoonKY]

My control panel gives the following description of the CPU or processor on my computer: AMD C-70 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics 1.00 GHz

What does the 1.00 GHz signify in the description of my processor? I know that 1.00 is a frequency that means 1.00 Gigahertz, but what in my CPU is oscillating at 1.00 Gigahertz?

 

[mfb]

The graphics units makes 1 billion computing steps per second.
As usual, Wikipedia has an article

 

[Hesch]

What does the 1.00 GHz signify in the description of my processor?

That is the clock frequency.

Your CPU may contain a frequency multiplier. I don't know your CPU, but say it multiplies an external clock frequency by 10, then an external crystal oscillator with a clock frequency = 100 MHz is connected, and the internal clock ferquency in the CPU will become 10*100 MHz = 1000 MHz = 1 GHz.

When the CPU processes operations like "add register bx to register ax", it could spend 4 clock cycles to do that operation, thus using 4 ns.

So the clock frequency indicates how fast your CPU can execute some program.