Hyperthreaded or not?

[Finrir]

alright so there i am looking at AMD and Intel processors. i'm reading on newegg.com at Intel processors and under specifications it says that this processor does not support hyper-threading..... well i thought the whole big thing about these processors what that they were hyperthreaded. but right now most of the games and applications aren't hyperthreaded. but if it says they aren't hyperthreaded..... then wtf? help me out i'm confused..

[One4yu2c]

HyperThreading is an Intel technology where, in short, one processor core can work on two different processing units at the same time, thereby simulating a dual-core or dual-CPU system. It's just not as efficient, and you're still dealing with one physical processor. To use a simplistic analogy, it'd be like painting a house with two hands, instead of using one hand while your other one sits idle.

AMD's X2 and Intel's Core 2 line of processors are dual-core chips, which means that there are two physical processors on a single die. The term I think you were looking for is mulit-threaded, and when developers code their applications to be multi-threaded, dual and quad-core processors are essentially able to process tasks twice (or four times) as fast a single core processor. To use the same analogy as above, it's now like having two (or four) people paint a house, as opposed to one.

And here's where things get interesting. Dual-core CPUs are just now starting to become mainstream, so up until this point, developers haven't put a ton of concentration into multi-threaded coding. The situation is improving though, and even regardless of the second (or third and fourth) cores, today's processors (like the Core 2 Duo) sport other architectural enhancements that help them outperform yesterday's single-core processors at any given clockspeed.

[dnorf87]

Hyperthreading was nothing but a way to exploit the super long pipeline of the Netburst architecture. Basically, a way to make it seem not so bad.

They better not come out with another processor that supports Hyperthreading.

[Yellowhello]

Originally Posted by dnorf87

Hyperthreading was nothing but a way to exploit the super long pipeline of the Netburst architecture. Basically, a way to make it seem not so bad.

They better not come out with another processor that supports Hyperthreading.

I heard that Intel made a quad core with hyperthreading that made it seem like a eight-core CPU. Don't know if it's true, just a rumor I heard.