A curiousity: Intel's 'Core' processors ...

[barney]

I'm really curious about this, but nothing I've researched gives me a satisfactory answer, so I thought I'd try it here.

My primary box has an Intel i7 processor, with Win7 64-bit OS.  A desktop widget, All CPU Meter shows eight ( channels (?).  By loading the CoreTemp utility, the widget will display CPU temp(s).  However, when I look at the CoreTemp data, it shows only four channels.  After noticing this, I've observed that of the eight ( indicators shown by All CPU Meter, each pair shows the same temperature, i.e., channels one (1) and two (2) are the same, three (3) and four (4) are the same ...

Now I'm curious about the CPU:

• How many cores does it really have?
• Why do I see eight ( channels while CoreTemp]/i] shows only four (4)?
• Why can I see, upon occasion, activity in the even-numbered channels?

'Nother words, "What the hell is going on here?"

Edit:  how do I display numeral eight in parentheses without showing a happy face?

[scancode]

Your Core i7 processor has 4 cores, and hyperthreading support. Task manager sees it as 8 processors. (4 physical cores for a total of 8 logical threads)

[mwb1100]

The i7 is a quad-core processor with 'hyper threading' technology.  Each core can run 2 threads concurrently (with some limitations).  so some tools show the processor as having 8 processors, even though 4 of those processors are 'virtual', provided by the hyper-threading.

As I understand it, hyper-threading basically provides 2 sets of registers and an instruction decoding pipeline for each thread. However, there's only a single execution unit that the two 'hyper-threads' must share. One thread can use the execution unit when the other is waiting for a memory fetch, for example.

(and you can get an (8) to show up by checking the "Don't use smileys" box at the bottom of the edit window - just above the "Attach" field).

[barney]

Hm-m-m ... that seems simple enough.  I remember seeing a treatise or three (3) on hyper-threading, but the treatment was much more esoteric ... sometimes, it seems, search results are overly technical, less clear than they might be  .  I wish Google had a toggle, dumbass/technical  .

Guess I'll have to live with the lack of paren-8-paren ... I was hoping for a different resolution ... smileys are the only thing that save me from seeming even more brusque than I am  .

[mouser]

You can also select text and hit the "nobbc" tag button, which tells the forum to ignore text between the tags  when it comes to things like smileys.

[barney]

Doesn't seem to work for me ... ( is plain, and (8) is within the nobbc tags, but both display as a smiley  .