Unfortunately, the technical expertise you think I have is not true. I am a layman also. As for your questions, I agree with "why" is there a ring oscillator in a PLL and "why" you wouldn't want the ring oscillator "at times" to run at its maximum possible speed. Not always, but sometimes it should be able to do that to get the most out of modern day microprocessors. Who knows? It is all about semantics now ...