Hypertreading faster myth or truth?

[Gregory G Carter]

Applications need to be threaded, and fully re-entrant to gain maxmium 
benefits of HyperThreading.  Such things as:

Linux Kernel....the Kernel could be even more rentrant than it is now.  
For example one of the biggest gains in networking performance over 2.4 
series kernel is due to the fact that in 2.4 only one CPU at a time 
could be serially assigned to handle network traffic.  In 2.6 the TCP/IP 
stack is much more rentrant and more than 1 cpu can handle a network 
request.

But, any applications that uses a rentrant code is a great candidate 
from HT Technology.

Surprisingly, very fews games are candidates for this sort of thing as 
sharing CPU load to update the screen is problematic when the video card 
is doing all the work, so such things as 3D games don't really benefit 
that much.

-gc


ByteEnable wrote:

>On Friday 30 April 2004 11:01, Christian B. Ellsworth Capo wrote:
>  
>
>>Intel says that a cpu with HT turned on is faster, but is that true for
>>Linux? and for FC2 as well?, I have seen some @intel.com posts so a
>>Intel Inside view could be very interesing.
>>
>>some people of the list are also kernel developers... so a kernel
>>developer view also can be helpful...
>>
>>In this link are some benchmarks that don't show any real improvement on
>>a HT-on cpu vs a HT-off CPU.
>>http://amber.scripps.edu/unc_duke_apr04.html
>>(not my page... just a google result looking for hypertread linux
>>benchmark)
>>
>>Is that True?
>>Some links to other HT benchmarks on Linux can be helpfull...
>>
>>greets.
>>--
>>Christian B. Ellsworth Capo (k at dicec.cl)
>>Linux Chief Engineer
>>RedHat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
>>
>>DICEC Ltda.
>>Mariano Sanchez Fontecillas 966b, Las Condes, Santiago, Chile.
>>Phone (56 2) 2633340
>>Fax (56 2) 2071820
>>Mobile (56 9) 4195632
>>
>>All Your Base Are Belong To Tux
>>    
>>
>
>Here is a link:
>
>http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20040226231747944
>
>Peformance gains can certainly be had with HyperThreading in a single physical 
>CPU instance.  
>
>Byte
>
>
>  
>