Paul Bemowski

In early 2002 Intel became the first chip manufacturer to release a processor incorporating a new technology known as Simultaneous Multithreading, or SMT. Intel's SMT implementation (dubbed Hyper-Threading or HT) has been available in their Xeon processor line for over a year, with little fanfare. In April 2003, Intel announced that HT technology will be added to its desktop-focused Pentium 4 line of processors. With HT enabled on one of these new systems, the BIOS will present a single processor to the operating system as two logical processors. As Java developers, we should all be excited about this new feature of Intel processors. The java.lang.Thread object was one of the key factors driving Java to the strong position it enjoys in the server-side applications market. Both client and server applications written in Java often make heavy use of threads. Indeed ev... (more)

Hyper-Threading Linux

With the introduction of the Xeon, Xeon DP, and Xeon MP processors using the P4 core architecture, Intel has incorporated a new feature known as Hyper-Threading or HT. HT is Intel's implementation of a technology known as Simultaneous Multi-Threading, or SMT, that allows a single physical processor to execute multiple threads concurrently. This new feature has great potential in the heavily threaded back-end systems that Linux is targeting in the enterprise data center. Understanding Hyper-Threading In an SMT system, a single physical processor duplicates some of the on-chip arch... (more)