Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 07:41:25 11/01/02
Go up one level in this thread
On October 31, 2002 at 10:53:07, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: >On October 30, 2002 at 06:59:21, Terje Vagle wrote: > >>Hi all, >> >>The new cpu from intel will have a new function called >>hyper-threading. >> >>This will make the operating system able to recognize the cpu as if it was >>2 cpu's. >> >>Could the programs with smp-support make use of this? >> >>Regards, >> >>Terje Vagle > >No chessprograms cannot make use of that feature at all. It is sad but >the truth. Hyperthreading is a cool thing for the future but the P4 >processor is a too small processor to allow hyperthreading from getting >to work. > >Apart from that a major problem is that even if we have a great processor >which really allows hyperthreading to be effective, that the threads >run at unequal speeds. > >Hyper threading is supposed to work for 2 threads where 1 is a fast >thread and the other is some kind of background thread eating little cpu >time. > >In chessprograms having a second search thread which just runs now and >then in the background is simply impossible to use. It is not impossible at all. The only problem was spinlocks and Eugene posted a link to an Intel document that describes how to solve this problem. Given that solution, hyper-threading will work just fine since spinlocks won't confuse the processor... It won't be 2x faster, but it will certainly be faster if you can run a second thread while the first is blocked on a memory access...
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