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multithreadinghyperthreading

Hyper-Threading and CPU-bound processes

So I'm running a cpu intensive task that isn't parallelized on my i7 laptop.

KSysGuard reports that I'm using 12.5% of the available cpu.

If I disable hyper threading am I likely to get a meaningful performance increase? It'll require flashing a new BIOS, so I wanted an opinion before I get too involved in the idea...

Thanks,

N

Solution

  • Your task is using all of a single core, not 12.5% of one. 12.5% is 1/8 - you're maxing out one of the eight hardware threads your hyperthreaded quad-core processor has. If you disable hyperthreading, you'll have only four hardware threads, so your tools will report 25% usage - but your task won't complete any more quickly.

    If you want to use more of your processor, try to parallelize the work.