Re: [SLE] For or against ..Hyperthreading.

From: Bruce Marshall (bmarsh_at_bmarsh.com)
Date: 08/30/03

  • Next message: will: "Re: [SLE] For or against ..Hyperthreading." 
    To: SLE <suse-linux-e@suse.com>
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2003 13:44:42 -0400

    On Friday 29 August 2003 23:57 pm, Ben Rosenberg wrote:
    > I have partly a question and partly a survey. I just got a P4 2.4ghz
    > (c) proc, mb w/ 512M DDR400 dropped in my lap at work so I could
    > upgrade my workstation in the office. It does have hyperthreading.
    > I've never user HT hardware and I've heard conflicting reports about
    > it. I have it turned off right now and I haven't installed the SMP
    > kernel since I'm not sure I'm going to bother. I guess my question
    > is...for a workstation doing webbrowsing, documents in OO, Gaim,
    > playing mp3's and s**tloads of xterms. Does HT give or take away from
    > the enviroment as far as speed and all that. All opinions are welcome.
    > :)

    No one's taken this on so I'll give it a crack:

    I'm going to assume that HT works in a similar manner to having two cpu
    in SMP formation... (although something tells me that it's not quite
    that efficient.)

    1) Having one CPU that is twice (or close to twice) as fast as two cpu's
    is always the best way to go.

    2) The reason for (1) is that most of your computing time is going to be
    spent on one task, and in an SMP situation you can only apply 1 cpu to
    that task at a time. Therefore, a 2Ghz cpu in that situation will do
    MUCH better than two cpu's of 1Ghz.

    3) Given that you have (two) cpus so-to-speak, there is not much harm in
    using HT. There might be a slight addition of system overhead in
    scheduling two cpu's but that should be gained by the 2nd cpu being able
    to handle other tasks such as spooling and printing, and all the other
    system type threads that occur while your doing your own tasks of word
    processing, etc.

    4) On the other hand, since I don't know much about HT, if it takes a
    2Ghz cpu and turns it into (mostly) two 1Ghz cpu's by sharing all of the
    resources in the chip, then it would be best not to use HT.

    So in a nutshell, it shouldn't hurt, might help a little, you probably
    won't notice any difference, and besides, it's a neat conversation
    piece. :-) 

    -- 
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
+ Bruce S. Marshall  bmarsh@bmarsh.com  Bellaire, MI         08/30/03 
13:36  +
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
"Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is Genius." - George Bernard Shaw
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