Popular Science knowledge: Multicore vs Hyper-threading

The CPU information is displayed in the Windows Task Manager (below), and a few rectangular boxes on the right indicate how many CPUs there are, and from the image below, there seems to be 4 CPUs on my machine, but actually?

In fact, my machine might have 4 separate CPUs, or 2 dual-core CPUs, or a 2-core CPU with Hyper-threading capabilities ... There are many possibilities, and the performance gap will be great.

Why do you say that? First, look at the concept of multi-core. In simple terms, a multi-core CPU is equivalent to multiple single core CPUs, such as the dual-core Intel T7300, which is about the equivalent of 2 single core CPUs (perhaps a little bit like a level two cache is shared). On motherboards that support single CPUs only (most PCs motherboards do), the use of multi-core CPUs can significantly increase the speed of the operation.

In contrast to multi-core, Hyper-threading refers to multiple threads on the core of a CPU, typically two. A CPU that does not support hyper-Threading will only run one instruction at a time, creating a problem that the instruction may use only 50% of the CPU's circuit, and 50% is idle, so computing resources is wasted. So Intel proposed Hyper-Threading technology, if the next two instructions can be executed simultaneously without affecting each other, the CPU will optimize the process to achieve the effect of increasing the calculation speed, but the actual use of the effect is not obvious.

So, even if the Task Manager displays two boxes, it does not mean that the dual-core CPU is used, such as Atom N450, and most atom chips are single core dual threads. Before you buy a computer or check the information for good, do not be fooled by the business.

Note : More wonderful tutorials Please pay attention to the triple computer tutorial section, triple Computer office group: 189034526 welcome you to join