Specifications

Computer Architecture and Maintenance (G-Scheme-2014)
With Hyper-Threading, a microprocessor's "core" processor can execute two
(rather than one) concurrent streams (or thread s) of instructions sent by the operating
system. Having two streams of execution units to work on allows more work to be
done by the processor during each clock cycle . To the operating system, the Hyper-
Threading microprocessor appears to be two separate processors. Because most of
today's operating systems (such as Windows and Linux) are capable of dividing their
work load among multiple processors (this is called symmetric multiprocessing
or SMP ), the operating system simply acts as though the Hyper-Threading processor is
a pool of two processors.
HT Technology was introduced on Xeon workstation-class processors with a 533
MHz system bus in March 2002. It found its way into standard desktop PC processors
starting with the Pentium 4 3.06 GHz processor in November 2002. HT Technology
predates multicore processors, so processors that have multiple physical cores, such as
the Core 2 and Core i Series, may or may not support this technology depending on the
specific processor version. A quad-core processor that supports HT Technology (like
the Core i Series) would appear as an 8-core processor to the OS; Intel’s Core i7-3970X
has six cores and supports up to 12 threads. Internally, an HT-enabled processor has
two sets of general-
purpose registers,
control registers,
and other
architecture
components for
each core, but both
logical processors
share the same
cache, execution
units, and buses.
During operations,
each logical
processor handles a
single thread.
Prepared By – Prof. Manoj.kavedia (9860174297 – 9324258878 ) (www.kavediasir.yolasite.com)
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