What is hyperthreading?
Introduction
Hyperthreading is a feature that makes one physical CPU core appear as two logical cores to the operating system. It was first introduced in Intel processors in 2002, and has become very popular over the years. The operating system sees each logical core as a separate CPU and schedules tasks accordingly. Each core has its own register set, but shares the single FPU (faster floating point unit), cache and other resources with the other logical core on that physical processor.
Hyperthreading is a feature that makes one physical CPU core appear as two logical cores to the operating system.
Hyperthreading is a feature that makes one physical CPU core appear as two logical cores to the operating system. This enables the operating system to schedule tasks on both CPUs simultaneously, which can be beneficial if you have a workload that's heavy on multi-core processing (i.e., running multiple programs at once).
The same thing goes for single-core processors: they can only run one program at a time; however, it's possible for them to have multiple threads within it—so long as there are enough resources available within your machine (i.e., RAM), then yes! You could potentially see up to four threads running simultaneously in each logical core of your processor!
It was first introduced in Intel processors in 2002.
Hyperthreading was first introduced in 2002, and it was used in the Pentium 4 with the NetBurst microarchitecture. The technology has since been incorporated into all Intel processors, including those from its "Skylake" line of processors.
The idea behind hyperthreading is that multiple logical CPUs can be added to a single physical processor core through software or firmware updates—which means you can have four logical cores on your laptop while only having two physical cores (one per each CPU).
How does it work?
“Hyperthreading is a technology that allows a single CPU to run multiple threads. Each thread is assigned to a logical core, and each logical core runs its own thread. The operating system sees these CPUs as separate CPUs, so it schedules tasks accordingly."
The operating system sees each logical core as a separate CPU and schedules tasks accordingly.
Hyperthreading can be used to increase the number of threads the operating system can schedule. For example, if you have a lot of threads you want to run simultaneously, hyperthreading will help make sure that each thread gets its fair share of resources and doesn't get bogged down by having too many things going on at once. In other words: when it comes time for your OS (or virtual machine) to decide which task should be executed next—say it's time for some work from our first program—the OS will choose from among all those running in parallel on our computer's logical processors based on their priority levels.
Each core has its own register set, but shares the single FPU, cache and other resources with the other logical core on that physical processor.
Register set is a collection of data that is used for computation. All logical cores share the same register set, but each core has its own cache and FPU (or floating point unit). Each logical core also has its own memory and interrupt controller.
What’s great about hyperthreading is that it allows you to get better performance out of your processor by giving you more resources than what would be available if you were running on a single physical processor.
Is hyperthreading important for gaming?
If you have a lot of threads to run, then hyperthreading can be helpful. For example, if your computer has six cores and you have a game that needs four cores to run well (say, Battlefield 3), then hyperthreading will allow the game to use all six cores rather than only half of them.
However, this isn't always the case: if you only need two or three threads for gaming purposes (such as playing League of Legends), there's no benefit from having another one running in parallel with existing ones; instead it'll just add overhead on top of those already running at full capacity. And even though Hyper-Threading may seem like an improvement over traditional dual-core processors because they allow more instructions per clock cycle at higher speeds (but not necessarily faster clocks), this doesn't mean that they're worth spending money on unless there's something specific about how much data processing power is needed—and even then some CPUs offer higher performance than others even when using only one core!
In theory, hyperthreading should improve performance when all available logical cores are in use.
In theory, hyperthreading should improve performance when all available logical cores are in use. That's because each core can do multiple tasks simultaneously, meaning there's less waiting time for results to filter back from the CPU to your application.
The problem is that game developers have not embraced this technology as much as they could have or should have. Game engines are notoriously hard to reengineer and optimize; they're complex pieces of software that run on top of an extensive system stack—and even then aren't always made with code optimization in mind (or at least not enough).
It can be beneficial once you've maxed out the number of physical cores you have available.
When you have to do a lot of different things at once and don't want to wait for your CPU to finish processing each task, hyperthreading can be an important consideration.
If you run into this situation: "I have a ton of tasks that need doing, but my computer has only two
physical cores."
Then hyperthreading might be the answer!
Hyperthreading can be useful to increase thread count once you have used up all your physical cores.
Hyperthreading is one of the most useful features of modern processors. It allows you to run two threads on a single core, which means that if your processor has two physical cores, it can perform four threads at once.
Hyperthreading can be useful to increase thread count once you have used up all your physical cores. For example, if you have an eight-core processor and only need six of those cores for running applications like Photoshop or video editing software (which would require more than three), then hyperthreading allows you to make use of some idle processing power when running other programs that don't require a lot of computing power—like word processing software or web browsers like Chrome or Firefox!
Conclusion
Hyperthreading can be a useful feature for gaming. It allows you to use two logical cores per physical core, which could give you some extra performance if your system isn't hyper-threaded and has only one or two logical cores in use.