How flip-flops are implemented in the Intel 8086 processor (righto.com) A key concept for a processor is the management of “state”, information that persists over time. Much of a computer is built from logic gates, such as NAND or NOR gates, but logic gates have no notion of time. Processors also need a way to hold values, along with a mechanism to move from step to step in a controlled fashion. This is the role of “sequential logic”, where the output depends on what happened before. Sequential logic usually operates off a clock signal,1 a sequence of regular pulses that controls the timing of the computer. (If you have a 3.2 GHz processor, for instance, that number is the clock frequency.)