QUOTE(kryogenix @ Nov 12 2004, 6:54 AM)
old news? the register broke the story yesterday...
i have only one cpu, hyper threading is enabled so it thinks i have two.
Incorrect. Your computer and windows XP will detect your Pentium 4 as one cpu. Hyper-threading helps the cpu compute more threads of information more efficiently compared to cpus in the past.
"To improve performance in the past, threading was enabled in the software by splitting instructions into multiple streams so that multiple processors could act upon them"
Notice it says software, the software itself has to support Hyperthreading. Not all applications are Hyperthreading enabled so in some cases hyperthreading yeilds no performance gains. If you want to say that hyperthreading is more than one cpus. It may handle information better, but it still has one set of l1 cache, l2 cache rather than if it was a dual processor setup.
There are dual procressor motherboards which support pentium 4's with hyperthreading. That would be considered having 2 cpus, hyperthreading on that would be very efficient!