Hyper-threading

The extra performance gained through hyper-threading technology comes from increased processor utilisation.

The chip appears to the operating system as though it is two processors so, whenever the chip becomes idle, a second operation uses the available resources.

Tests have shown a typical 30 per cent improvement when running multi-threaded applications, which can carry out multiple functions - or threads - in parallel. And further performance enhancements can be gained through fine tuning.

Hyper-threading is largely invisible to the computer system, so there is good reason to include it as part of the processor architecture.

And you can expect increasing interest in the development of applications able to take full advantage of the performance boost.

To date Intel has been the main driving force for hyper-threading. The chip giant offers the technology as an option on its Xeon DP and MP processors, and is expected to introduce it for the 64-bit Itanium 2 in the next two years.

Others, such as Sun Microsystems with its UltraSparc processor chip, are likely to adopt hyper-threading in the near future.

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