Detecting Hyper-Threading Technology and dual cores

Intel and Core 2 Duo: Intel has always continued to improve the performance and functionality of its microprocessors. One of these features is the Hyper-Threading Technology (HT Technology). This feature provides more than one logical processor so that separate threads can execute concurrently.

---

by Jeff Andrews. Intel Corp.

Intel has always continued to improve the performance and functionality of its microprocessors. One of these features is the Hyper-Threading Technology (HT Technology). This feature provides more than one logical processor so that separate threads can execute concurrently. However, HT Technology is evolving and is now venturing into the area of dual-processor cores in a physical package. This gives a greater performance boost over the HT Technology that was originally introduced.

This paper discusses how to detect HT Technology, the number of processor cores on a single package, and the number of logical processors per processor core and physical package.

HT Technology
This technology allows the computer to execute two or more threads (depending on the specific processor) in parallel. While it does not necessarily double the performance of applications that take advantage of multiple threads, it significantly increases the performance of the application.

Dual cores
"Dual core" refers to two microprocessors (CPUs) in one physical package (that is, a single chip), which is the next step for HT Technology over the multiple logical processors on a single core package. The CPUs share the same packaging and the same bus interface into the chipset/memory. They operate as distinct CPUs except certain products may share the higher level cache. Keep in mind that microprocessors are constantly evolving so future processors may behave differently than described.