So what's a Intel P4 HT?

[FlameFlash]

I saw a commercial last night, actually, quite a few commercials last night, about some 'new' (not sure if it actually is or not) P4 chip with 'HT' technology.

What is this tech? Or is this basically a P4.5?

Being a Mac user I of course don't know anything about this region of the personal computing world but I don't enjoy ignorance when I have access to so many sciologists.

[centrifuge]

HT = hyperthreading, to put it in a way that some computer geeks will flame me for, under cirtain circumstances your computer will behave as if it has more than one processor, thus making it more proficient at multi-tasking.

[centrifuge]

Oh and btw it has been around for several months now. I have a 3.0 gig processor w/ HT in my machine.

[FlameFlash]

Ah, one of the things the Mac community was claiming we had over the P4 is now gone then. Great...

Edit: As I said above... I don't pay much attention to the Win-tel world.

Is AMD planning a processor in response?

[centrifuge]

I think that their 64 bit processor was their response. It came out around 2 months after the P4 w/ HT

[FlameFlash]

Heh, boy am I out of touch with tech news.

/me shrugs.

Many thanks.

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by FlameFlash
Heh, boy am I out of touch with tech news.

* FlameFlash shrugs.

Many thanks.

It's not hard to lose track, the only reason that I know is because I subscribe to a pc magazine, now if you asked me about any new mac technology, I'd be out of touch.

The "new" standard changes so quickly that it's not worth it to keep track too closely. For example, after AMD announced the 64 bit processor, Intel announced its P4 "extreme" edition, which is just a P4 w/HT and a gigantic front side bus. (I don't know the exact number but I know that it was over a gig).

[FlameFlash]

Heh, good point.

<--MacWorld subscriber.

That's my only magazine... period.

[Thue]

Originally posted by centrifuge
HT = hyperthreading, to put it in a way that some computer geeks will flame me for, under cirtain circumstances your computer will behave as if it has more than one processor, thus making it more proficient at multi-tasking.

It will have 2 processors usable by the operating system, but it is not quite as fast as having 2 "real" processors in your computer.

[Thue]

Originally posted by centrifuge
The "new" standard changes so quickly that it's not worth it to keep track too closely. For example, after AMD announced the 64 bit processor, Intel announced its P4 "extreme" edition, which is just a P4 w/HT and a gigantic front side bus. (I don't know the exact number but I know that it was over a gig).

Gigantic cache, not front side bus. And the size was 2MB.

Oh, and I think the E's in P4 EE stod for "Extremely Expensive" .

[Thue]

Originally posted by FlameFlash
Ah, one of the things the Mac community was claiming we had over the P4 is now gone then. Great...

Edit: As I said above... I don't pay much attention to the Win-tel world.

Is AMD planning a processor in response?

AMD's athlon 64 could be seen as a response, as it is generally faster in single-processor bechmarks (and maybe some dual too?), and has the 64-bit code support. AMD plans to make dual-core (better than hypertherading) chips in 2005 IIRC.

[centrifuge]

Thanx for the correction

[Urban Ranger]

AMD's Opteron and Athlon 64 are in fact not responses as they were announced way before Intel came out with the HT gimmick. The problem with HT is, most of the time, there isn't enough data to go around for that to do any good.

I am a multiprocessing man myself

[Thue]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
AMD's Opteron and Athlon 64 are in fact not responses as they were announced way before Intel came out with the HT gimmick. The problem with HT is, most of the time, there isn't enough data to go around for that to do any good.

As is the "problem" with current single-threaded processors as well one could argue . *Thue continues using his P3 600MHz, much as he would like to buy a new one just for kicks*.

[MichaeltheGreat]

The difference is that the pre-HT Intel processors acted on a single piece of data from a single thread all the way through the pipe, then grabbed the next piece of data only when it was done with the first one. The HT can process data from different threads through the pipe in sequence, so that one piece doesn't have to go all the way through before the next one starts, as long as it's in a different thread.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
AMD's Opteron and Athlon 64 are in fact not responses as they were announced way before Intel came out with the HT gimmick. The problem with HT is, most of the time, there isn't enough data to go around for that to do any good.

In normal business desktop environments, where you're doing a bunch of mundane stuff and have a few things going on in the background, it does have a decent benefit.