Hyper - Threading

[cyanide]

I've been doing some computer shopping lately and have come across hyper-threading -seems to be a fairly new technology

I was told, in simple terms, that it helps / is most beneficial to those that do multi-tasking and/or running multiple programs at the same time.
Which, if this is the case, would benefit me greatly

I wonder if anyone can explain what it is / how it works / what it does , etc ?

[cyanide]

whoa ! nobody ??

okay, anyway I found some info...
pretty much what I had thought

From Intel
Did you know a PC based on the Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor with HT Technology can handle more things at once? In fact, Hyper-Threading Technology (or HT Technology for short) can provide software performance benefits of up to 25% in multitasking situations, delivering advanced performance for both home and business PC users.
http://www.intel.com/products/ht/hyperthreading.htm?iid=ipp_htm+ht&

[minstrel]

I've been reading a little about this here and there too (in places like PCWorld, etc.). There seems to be some doubt about whether the average user will actually see a significant difference or what sorts of users will notice a difference versus those who probably won't... so far, I'm mostly confused, which isn't unusual for me.

[burntalive]

It's true...the average PC user will most likely not see the benefits of the hyper-thread technology as the typical user does not do near as much data processing as a medium to large corp will. From what I have read it appears that what Intel thought was goin to be the next big thing in CPUs that everyone will want has turned into a corp feature. As it is my understanding that the Hyper-threading is much like SMT (Simultaneous Multi-threaded Technology) except that apps don't need to be specifically designed to take advantage of it. As long as the app is multi-threaded and multi-tasking enabled it should be able to take advantage of the techonology. But unless you are doing 10's of thousands transactions with a large user base...I don't think you will care, as an example, that something takes 1ms rather than 1 microsec to complete as this could be critical in a corp environment.

So in my opinion I wouldn't base my PC buying around the technology as you may or may not reap the benefits.

Steve

[mikmik]

cyanide asked
I was told, in simple terms, that it helps / is most beneficial to those that do multi-tasking and/or running multiple programs at the same time.

I think that if it has to do with "multi-tasking" that matauri would be the one to ask (O:

Seriously, I usually advise people like web designers and programmers to consider the "Barton" 2500+ chips on nForce2 dual DDR boards as an excellent cost/performance buy.

How do others feel?

[godzilla]

As far as I know, Hyperthreading is just another marketing name for ***. I thought of bad thingsm, but I should say it is a good invention that may be profitable to others though not to me.

The idea is basicly that a single chip is capable to execute two different type of instructions at the same time. Therefore an instruction that comes from a video editting software will be purely mathematical and can be executed in the same time as some sound instruction for xeample(the examples are random and may not apply to real life)
Thus the system profits from greater speeds and some of the applications amy thing that a computer is dual processor and thus is capable of some concurrency.
The multithreading is an answer for AMD's wide pipeline. It means that in general AMD cheap is capable to fead more instructions per unit time(and therefore possible increase in speed) while multithreading will allow more instructions for execution at the same unit time(given that "condition" above is satisfied), again possible speed increase.

In short: if you run multiple unrelated tasks at the same time you will be able to profit from the speed that this CPU has to offer. If you, like me, run Winamp, System maintainance progs, M$ Word and still write messages in the WPW forum you won't see any difference if hyperthreading is enabled or disabled.

Though on a side note, Intels' chips, at least here in Montreal/Canada, are offering more price/performance advantage then thouse of AMD.