Transfer rate is an amount transferred over time, ie Gigabytes per second.
That's data rate, not transfert rate.
"Transfer" and "rate" are rather simple words and used together mean a number of transfers relative to another value, here time was implicit and you understood this part as "per second" yourself.
Words have meaning and you cannot just say you are right to use the wrong ones because you don't accept common definition and replace them by your own.
Transfer frequency (in Hz, that's the SI unit for frequency) is the number of times a transfer happens per second.
This new definition of yours's, this "transfer frequency", what should it's unit be? It will need to be "something per second" or "something in hertz" to be easily understood.
And we cannot really use the hertz with no clarification because it's already used as is for the carrier signal.
We need to add another word for clarity, like transfert. And we could write it as a "T" and to express the number of time it happens in a second add a "per second" somewhere.
For DDR5-4800, the transfer frequency is 4800MHz.
Yeah, or instead of writing "a transfer frequency of 4800MHz" to try and be smart because "what is a clockspeed these days anyway?" just write 4800MT/s like everybody.
That means exactly the same thing in a clearer way.
And this way there is no confusion with the rest of the things that you believe are "stuck in the past" like the actual carrier signal frequency. Computer still relies on those to transmit data... It's not just a "control signal used to sync the pacing and rate of the actual transfer frequency" it's the real signal.
Clock frequency is irrelevant to this discussion, and it's been mostly irrelevant to the stated speed of RAM for the last 26 years of DDR's market history.
The only time you'll encounter the clock frequency of RAM these days is when discussing the 1:1 ratio of FCLK and MCLK in the BIOS. Note the terminology, "MCLK" refers to clock, ie the timing frequency, not the operating frequency of the memory. The clocks haven't matched the operating frequency for 26 years, I'm simply staggered that people haven't worked this out yet. DDR transfer frequency is 2x the clock frequency, GDDR5 and GDDR6 are 4x the clock frequency, and Rambus now have RAM thats 32x the clock frequency. Can you see that clock frequency is irrelevant now? That's why we talk in terms of transfer frequency and transfer rate.
Yeah, so maybe stop talking about it if that's not relevant to the discussion. Because I definitely wasn't talking about this.
My only point is that we have two words "MHz" and "MT/s" to describe two different things. There is no need to try and stretch the definition of a hertz to avoid using MT/s.
In case it's not crystal clear:
Clock frequency and transfer frequency are both frequencies,
That's were your stretching the definitions. The hertz is prevalent for use in cyclic events, using it to amalgamate two physically distincts events is incorrect in my book.
The two transfers per cycle are not the same, they don't happen in the same conditions! A single transfer doesn't physically repeat itself in a periodic manner like the carrier signal does.
but they are not the same frequencies and haven't been since SDR RAM fell out of use a quarter of a century ago. Since the ratio of clock frequency to transfer frequency varies depending on which type of memory you're talking about, there's no point even using clock frequency in a discussion unless you're comparing different memory types that use different clock-frequency-to-transfer-frequency ratios.
Since there is no point in using the frequency to describe the memory (I agree with you) why not use the right unit, the MT/s?
Mistaking WHICH frequency?!
See? It really really matters. Omitting which frequency you're talking about makes your statement worthless because it's incomplete. You also have to define "transfer" better too. I know you mean transfer frequency from context, but you've already confused transfer frequency and transfer rate above.
What you really meant to say was "Mistaking clock frequency for transfer frequency is like mistaking a one-way trip for a round trip". That would be a correct sentence.
My entire point is that people don't understand the terminology properly and make nonsensical, incomplete statements like your quotes that just add to the confusion. Don't do that; please learn and spread education, rather than sowing confusion and ambiguity.
You're the only person believing that "frequency" might mean "transfer rate" instead of "frequency". The word I used have meaning, just stick to it don't infer your misunderstanding of what is a carrier signal.
Coincidently you're also the only one that doesn't want to use MT/s to avoid confusion.