A hyper threaded processor is only a single core CPU.
Its more marketing than performance, however you might as well run an SMP kernel on it just 'cause you can ;-)
When you upgrade to your twin Core Opterons, now that would be a good machine to run an SMP kernel on
P.
Paul Heinlein wrote:
On 4/20/05 9:09 AM, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
BTW, do note that HT processor still has only single core. Some reports indicate that there's not much advantage of HT over non-HT processors (and consequently not much advantage of running SMP kernel on HT processor).
Fully realizing that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," I can report that enabling HT and running an SMP kernel speeds up parallel make operations by 15-20%. E.g., running "make -j2" on P4/HT/SMP is slightly faster than "make -j2" on the same processor running a UP kernel. It seems like the SMP kernel is better able to keep the core busy than the UP kernel.
Other operations, particularly day-to-day desktop stuff, seemingly don't benefit much at all.