James Wilkinson wrote:
Michael Miles wrote:
> I can't wait to see the Bulldozer series in action ( 16 cores
> Hyperthreaded) yeah baby..........
>
Unfortunately, Bulldozer doesn’t do conventional SMT (which is what
Intel usually¹ means by hyperthreading). It has two integer cores
sharing a wide floating point engine and level 2 cache. This combination
is what AMD call a “module”, but they will be selling it as two cores.
So a 16 core Bulldozer will have 16 hardware threads.
A module takes more power and area than a traditional core with
hyperthreading, but you should get more performance out of it, too.
Sorry,
James.
¹ Hyperthreading is an Intel trademark, and, as such, means precisely
what Intel wants it to mean at the moment. This can change (it means
something different for the Itanium).
Thank's for the clear up. My question is with Hyperthreading that is if
each core does double duty so to speak by looking after two threads
would it not do basically the same work as one core full bore on one thread.
Is there a speed difference (faster, slower)
It seems to me that two threads time share one core. Thus making the
work load the same as if one core was doing one task but at twice the speed
It is confusing why they would have Hyperthreading there.
An i7 920 with 4 cores does the same amount of work as the same chip
with 8 cores showing with Hyperthreading active.
Michael