Hyperthreading

Tags

comp-arch

A feature of some computer architectures that allows a single CPU core to appear to the OS as multiple virtual cores. The operating system can schedule processes on these virtual cores but all the processing will be done on a single core CPU.

Each core interleaves processes and threads, allowing it to perform a few instructions for a different thread/process while waiting for something in the background to complete (such as fetching a memory address).

The overall result is more instructions executed in a shorter time, meaning you can divide the number of cores you need to power smaller devices.