Looking for a good portable linux system

Michael ODonnell michael.odonnell at comcast.net
Mon Dec 20 12:20:01 EST 2004



> Hyperthreading uses two execution pipelines, but shares L1/L2 cache.
> So if the apps share some of the same memory and is CPU-bound,
> you'll see a performance benefit, since the two threads can hit
> L1/L2 cache.
>
> So what happens when you run two different apps?  One app has a
> cache miss which forces the CPU to go back out to memory, fill
> the cache, then return the data to the CPU.  Then the *other*
> execution pipeline wants something out of memory, can't find it
> in the cache, and so on.


Hyperthreading definitely isn't a panacea.  All I'm
suggesting is that if the OP's concern is that his GUI
will stall while a disk- or net-intensive process hogs the
memory interconnect, an MP system based on discrete cores
won't necessarily be better than a single hyperthreaded
core.  Here, BTW, are some relevant links I've saved:

 http://mutazilite.arstechnica.com/cgi-bin/htsearch?words=HyperThreading&x=0&y=0
 http://www.2cpu.com/daedalus/search.php?s=1&keywords=hyper-threading&where=news&time=all&location=both&per_page=20
 http://www.extremetech.com/search_results/0%2C2426%2C%2C00.asp?qry=hyperthreading&filterapp=&site=4
 http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1302
 http://www17.tomshardware.com/search/search.html?category=all&words=hyperthreading
 



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