<I understand the misunderstanding here. I look at this clock as the first to decouple itself from the outside world so it can run as fast as possible.>

Not much going on so hope you don't consider that I'm being argumentative. I thnik it is good that we remind ourselves of exactly what is the patentable magic in the 336. The reason being, when we lose sight of that, prior art can become more worrisome than it should be.

IMHO, it is the use of the ring oscillator, which is constructed using the same process technology as in the cpu. That is the magic enabling the cpu to run at max. Decoupling is necessary for such a system to work, but it does not provide any of the magic.

Opty