Hyper-Threading Technology

We all want our computers to be as speedy as they can be. There are many different ways to increase computer performance through different types of upgrades. Processors have been getting speedy because of demand and competition. The maximum capacities of processing speed are being reached by modern manufacturing techniques. To make processor fast, chipmakers have been creating new CPU architectures to process information not just faster but better in order to milk every ounce of processing power they can. Intel created Hyper-Threading technology as an upgrade in CPU architecture and quietly integrated into some of their processors for development and testing purposes.

It is based on the idea of simultaneous multi-threading technology (SMT) where multiple physical CPUs are used to process multiple threads at once. As an alternative of using multiple physical processors, Intel created multiple logical processors inside a single physical CPU. Intel recognizes that CPUs are inherently inefficient and have lots of computing power that never gets used.

Hyper-Threading Technology allows multi-threaded software applications to execute threads in parallel. Consequently resource utilization gives up higher processing throughput. It is basically a more superior form of Super-threading that first introduced on the Intel Xeon processors and later added to Pentium 4 processors. This type of threading technology was not present in a general-purpose microprocessor. To boost performance, threading was allowed in the software by splitting instructions into multiple streams so that multiple processors could act upon them. By using Hyper-Threading Technology, processor-level threading can be utilized which provides more efficient use of processor resources for greater parallelism and improved performance on today's multi-threaded software.

Hyper-Threading Technology is a multi-threading technology in which SMT is achieved by duplicating the architectural state on each processor, while sharing one set of processor execution resources. It also produces faster response times for multi-tasking workload environments. By permitting the processor to use on-die resources that would otherwise have been idle, it offers a performance boost on multi-threading and multi-tasking operations for the micro architecture.

In a CPU, every clock cycle has the ability to do one or more operations at a time. An only one processor can only handle so much during an individual clock cycle. Hyper-Threading permits a single physical CPU to fool an operating system capable of SMT operations into thinking there are two processors. Hyper-Threading produces logical processors to handle multiple threads in the same time slice a single physical processor would normally only be able to handle a single operation. There are some prerequisites that must be satisfied before taking advantage of Hyper-Threading. The first prerequisite, you must have a Hyper-Threading enabled processor, HT enabled chipset, BIOS and operating system. Further, your operating system must support the multiple threads. Finally, the number and type of application being used makes a difference on the increase in performance as well.

Hyper-Threading is a hardware upgrade to help make use of some of the wasted power of a CPU, but it also helps the operating system and applications to run more efficiently and therefore they can do more at once. There are millions of transistors inside a CPU that turn on and off to process commands. By adding more transistors chipmakers typically add more brute force computing power. More transistors equal a large CPU and it produces more heat. Hyper-Threading looks for to increase performance without significantly increasing the number of transistors contained on the chip, making the CPU footprint smaller and producing less heat.

Hyper-Threading offers two logical processors in one physical package. Each logical processor must share external resources like memory, hard disk, etc. and also must use the same physical processor for computations. The performance boost will not scale the same as a true multiprocessor architecture because of the shared nature of Hyper-Threading processors. System performance will be somewhere between that of a single CPU without Hyper-Threading and a multi-processor system with two comparable CPUs.

This technology is independent upon platform. Some applications are already multi-threaded and will automatically benefit from this technology. Multi-threaded applications take full benefits of the increased performance that Hyper-Threading Technology has to offer, permitting users will see immediate performance gains when multitasking. It also improved reaction and response time, and increased number of users a server can support. Today's multi-processing software is also compatible with Hyper-Threading Technology enabled platforms, but further performance gains can be realized by specifically tuning software for Hyper-Threading Technology. For future software optimizations and business growth this technology complements traditional multi-processing by providing additional headroom.