On 28 June 2011 13:21, Ross Mounce <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear list, <snip> > I believe the processor is a dual core Atom > N550 http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=50154 > Two questions: A) Why does it show as 4 processors? Are these all real? Have > I somehow 'unlocked' another couple *hopes*?
It's a dual-core processor with hyper-threading, appearing to the OS as having four cores. Two are real, two are "virtual". The design came in with the P4, in essence it tries to interleave instructions so the core is used more efficiently. > B) If it's just 4 threads, can I optimally run 4 > separate instances of a 32-bit program one each on each thread/core without > losing overall efficiency? (The program I have in mind is a bit > technical/obscure, and no, it doesn't have a 64-bit version) You shouldn't lose any efficiency - otherwise Intel wouldn't have added it. :) It basically tricks the OS into doing basic multithreading so the program doesn't have to. Jonathon -- [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
