Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Penryn and Hyper Threading

Its all about Intel technology called Hyper Threading. Its few years ago, when Intel discovered, that processor core is working only say 30-40% of time. In rest processor is waiting for data from memory or on HDD, and is unused. So, there was nice idea to make second cache and few switching circuits, and 1 core can work as 2, because in moments when first virtual core is waiting for data, second virtual can work, and than switch back. Hm, idea isnt bad, only problem is with scheduler. It dont know that those primary and secondary cores are only virtual, and so can say on first core run game (needing all) and on second video transformation or packing. And this of course leads to moment, when together output is higher, but every 1 application have not enough power. So, Hyper Threading dissapeared. But it is said, that new Penryn processors will contain it againt, but modified. Every physical core should report as 1 core, not 2 virtual cores, and work on those virtual ones will be probably controlled only by hardware. Hm, that may work..

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