HYPER THREADING seminar report

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ABSTRACT
Hyper-Threading Technology is a groundbreaking innovation from
Intel® Corporation that enables multi-threaded software applications to
execute threads in parallel This level of threading technology has never
been seen before in a general-purpose microprocessor. Internet, e-
Business, and enterprise software applications continue to put higher
demands on processors.
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.Today with Hyper-Threading
Technology, processor-level threading can be utilized which offers more
efficient use of processor resources for greater parallelism and
improved performance on today's multi-threaded software. Hyper-
Threading Technology provides thread-level-parallelism (TLP) on each
processor resulting in increased utilization of processor execution
resources. As a result, resource utilization yields higher processing
throughput. Hyper-Threading Technology is a form of simultaneous
multi-threading technology (SMT) where multiple threads of software
applications can be run simultaneously on one processor.

This technology is largely invisible to the platform. In fact, many

applications are already multi-threaded and will automatically benefit
from this technology. Today's multi-processing aware software is also
compatible with Hyper-Threading Technology enabled platforms, but
further performance gains can be realized by specifically tuning
software for Hyper-Threading Technology. This technology
complements traditional multi-processing by providing additional
headroom for future software optimizations and business growth.

INTRODUCTION
Hyper-Threading (HT) Technology is ground breaking technology from
Intel that allows processors to work more efficiently. This new
technology enables the processor to execute two series, or threads, of
instructions at the same time, thereby improving performance and
system responsiveness while delivering performance headroom for the
future.
Intel Hyper-Threading Technology improves the utilization of onboard
resources so that a second thread can be processed in the same
processor. Hyper-Threading Technology provides two logical
processors in a single processor package.

Hyper-Threading Technology offers:

• improved overall system performance

• increased number of users a platform can support
• improved reaction and response time because tasks can be run on
separate threads
• increased number of transaction that can be executed
• compatibility with existing IA-32 software
Code written for dual-processor (DP) and multi-processor (MP) systems
is compatible with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology-enabled platforms.
 A Hyper-Threading Technology-enabled system will automatically
process multiple threads of multi-threaded code.
UTILIZATION OF PROCESSOR RESOURCES
Intel Hyper-Threading Technology improves performance of multi-
threaded applications by increasing the utilization of the on-chip
resources available in the Intel® NetBurst™ microarchitecture. The Intel
NetBurst microarchitecture provides optimal performance when
executing a single instruction stream. A typical thread of code with a
typical mix of Intel® IA-32-based instructions, however, utilizes only
about 35 percent of the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture execution
resources.
By adding the necessary logic and resources to the processor die in
order to schedule and control two threads of code, Intel Hyper-
Threading Technology makes these underutilized resources available to
a second thread of code, offering increased throughput and overall
system performance.
Hyper-Threading Technology provides a second logical processor in a
single package for higher system performance. Systems containing
multiple Hyper-Threading Technology-enabled processors further
improve system performance, processing two code threads for each
processor.

HYPER-THREADING TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES PERFORMANCE

Intel Hyper-Threading Technology offers better performance
improvement as additional processors are added. Multi-processor
systems with Hyper-Threading Technology can outperform multi-
processor systems without Hyper-Threading Technology.

MULTI-THREADED APPLICATIONS
Virtually all contemporary operating systems (including Microsoft
Windows* and Linux*) divide their workload up into processes and
threads that can be independently scheduled and dispatched. The
same division of workload can be found in many high-performance
applications such as database engines, scientific computation
programs, engineering-workstation tools, and multi-media programs.

To gain access to increased processing power, programmers design

these programs to execute in dual-processor (DP) or multiprocessor
(MP) environments. Through the use of symmetric multiprocessing
(SMP), processes and threads can be dispatched to run on a pool of
several physical processors. With multi-threaded, MP-aware
applications, instructions from several threads are simultaneously
dispatched for execution by the processors' core. In processors with
Hyper-Threading Technology, a single processor core executes these
two threads concurrently, using out-of-order instruction scheduling to
keep as many of its execution units as possible busy during each clock
cycle.
Intel® NetBurst™ Microarchitecture Pipeline
Without Hyper-Threading Technology enabled, the Intel NetBurst
microarchitecture processes a single thread through the pipeline. Recall
that the typical mix of typical instructions only utilizes about 35% of the
resources in the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture.
MULTIPROCESSOR PERFORMANCE ON A SINGLE PROCESSOR
The Intel Xeon processor introduces a new technology called Hyper-
Threading (HT) that, to the operating system, makes a single processor
behave like two logical processors. When enabled, the technology
 allows the processor to execute multiple threads simultaneously, in
parallel within each processor, which can yield significant performance
improvement. We set out to quantify just how much improvement you
can expect to see. The current Linux symmetric multiprocessing (SMP)
kernel at both the 2.4 and 2.5 versions was made aware of Hyper-
Threading, and performance speed-up had been observed in
multithreaded benchmarks
This article gives the results of our investigation into the effects of
Hyper-Threading (HT) on the Linux SMP kernel. It compares the
performance of a Linux SMP kernel that was aware of Hyper-Threading
to one that was not. The system under test was a multithreading-
enabled, single-CPU Xeon. The benchmarks used in the study covered
areas within the kernel that could be affected by Hyper-Threading, such
as the scheduler, low-level kernel primitives, the file server, the network,
and threaded support.
The results on Linux kernel 2.4.19 show Hyper-Threading technology
could improve multithreaded applications by 30%. Current work on
Linux kernel 2.5.32 may provide performance speed-up as much as
51%.
HYPER-THREADING SPEEDS LINUX

Intel's Hyper-Threading Technology enables two logical processors on a

single physical processor by replicating, partitioning, and sharing the
resources within the Intel NetBurst microarchitecture pipeline.
Hyper-Threading support in the Xeon processor
The Xeon processor is the first to implement Simultaneous Multi-
Threading (SMT) in a general-purpose processor. To achieve the goal
of executing two threads on a single physical processor, the processor
simultaneously maintains the context of multiple threads that allow the
scheduler to dispatch two potentially independent threads concurrently.
The operating system (OS) schedules and dispatches threads of code
to each logical processor as it would in an SMP system. When a thread
is not dispatched, the associated logical processor is kept idle.
When a thread is scheduled and dispatched to a logical processor, LP0,
the Hyper-Threading technology utilizes the necessary processor
resources to execute the thread.
When a second thread is scheduled and dispatched on the second
logical processor, LP1, resources are replicated, divided, or shared as
necessary in order to execute the second thread. Each processor
makes selections at points in the pipeline to control and process the
threads. As each thread finishes, the operating system idles the unused
processor, freeing resources for the running processor.
The OS schedules and dispatches threads to each logical processor,
just as it would in a dual-processor or multi-processor system. As the
system schedules and introduces threads into the pipeline, resources
are utilized as necessary to process two threads.
Hyper-Threading support in Linux kernel 2.4
Under the Linux kernel, a Hyper-Threaded processor with two virtual
processors is treated as a pair of real physical processors. As a result,
the scheduler that handles SMP should be able to handle Hyper-
Threading as well. The support for Hyper-Threading in Linux kernel
2.4.x began with 2.4.17 and includes the following enhancements:
Kernel performance measurement
To assess the effects of Hyper-Threading on the Linux kernel, we
measured the performance of kernel benchmarks on a system
containing the Intel Xeon processor with HT. The hardware was a
 single-CPU, 1.6 GHz Xeon MP processor with SMT, 2.5 GB of RAM,
and two 9.2 GB SCSI disk drives. The kernel under measurement was
stock version 2.4.19 configured and built with SMP enabled. The
existence of Hyper-Threading support can be seen by using the
command cat /proc/cpuinfo to show the presence of two processors,
processor 0 and processor 1. Note the ht flag in Listing 1 for CPUs 0
and 1. In the case of no Hyper-Threading support, the data will be
displayed for processor 0 only.
Linux kernel benchmarks
To measure Linux kernel performance, five benchmarks were used:
LMbench, AIM Benchmark Suite IX (AIM9), chat, dbench, and tbench.
The LMbench benchmark times various Linux application programming
interfaces (APIs), such as basic system calls, context switching latency,
and memory bandwidth. The AIM9 benchmark provides measurements
of user application workload. The chat benchmark is a client-server
workload modeled after a chat room. The dbench benchmark is a file
server workload, and tbench is a TCP workload. Chat, dbench, and
tbench are multithreaded benchmarks, while the others are single-
threaded benchmarks.
Effects of Hyper-Threading on Linux APIs
The effects of Hyper-Threading on Linux APIs were measured by
LMbench, which is a microbenchmark containing a suite of bandwidth
and latency measurements. Among these are cached file read, memory
copy (bcopy), memory read/write (and latency), pipe, context switching,
networking, filesystem creates and deletes, process creation, signal
handling, and processor clock latency. LMbench stresses the following
kernel components: scheduler, process management, communication,
networking, memory map, and filesystem. The low level kernel
primitives provide a good indicator of the underlying hardware
capabilities and performance.

To study the effects of Hyper-Threading, we focused on latency

measurements that measure time of message control, (in other words,
how fast a system can perform some operation). The latency numbers
are reported in microseconds per operation.
Effects of Hyper-Threading on Linux single-user application workload
The AIM9 benchmark is a single user workload designed to measure
the performance of hardware and operating systems . Most of the tests
in the benchmark performed identically in Hyper-Threading and non-
Hyper-Threading, except for the sync file operations and Integer Sieves.
The three operations, Sync Random Disk Writes, Sync Sequential Disk
Writes, and Sync Disk Copies, are approximately 35% slower in Hyper-
Threading. On the other hand, Hyper-Threading provided a 60%
improvement over non-Hyper-Threading in the case of Integer Sieves.
Effects of Hyper-Threading on Linux multithreaded application workload

To measure the effects of Hyper-Threading on Linux multithreaded

applications, we use the chat benchmark, which is modeled after a chat
room. The benchmark includes both a client and a server. The client
side of the benchmark will report the number of messages sent per
second; the number of chat rooms and messages will control the
workload. The workload creates a lot of threads and TCP/IP
connections, and sends and receives a lot of messages. It uses the
following default parameters:
Number of chat rooms = 10
Number of messages = 100
 Message size = 100 bytes
Number of users = 20

By default, each chat room has 20 users. A total of 10 chat rooms will
have 20x10 = 200 users. For each user in the chat room, the client will
make a connection to the server. So since we have 200 users, we will
have 200 connections to the server. Now, for each user (or connection)
in the chat room, a "send" thread and a "receive" thread are created.
Thus, a 10-chat-room scenario will create 10x20x2 = 400 client threads
and 400 server threads, for a total of 800 threads. But there's more.
Each client "send" thread will send the specified number of messages to
the server. For 10 chat rooms and 100 messages, the client will send
10x20x100 = 20,000 messages. The server "receive" thread will receive
the corresponding number of messages. The chat room server will echo
each of the messages back to the other users in the chat room. Thus,
for 10 chat rooms and 100 messages, the server "send" thread will send
10x20x100x19 or 380,000 messages. The client "receive" thread will
receive the corresponding number of messages.
Effects of Hyper-Threading on Linux multithreaded file server workload
The effect of Hyper-Threading on the file server was measured with
dbench and its companion test, tbench. dbench is similar to the well
known NetBench benchmark from the Ziff-Davis Media benchmark
program, which lets you measure the performance of file servers as
they handle network file requests from clients. However, while
NetBench requires an elaborate setup of actual physical clients, dbench
simulates the 90,000 operations typically run by a NetBench client by
sniffing a 4 MB file called client.txt to produce the same workload. The
contents of this file are file operation directives such as SMBopenx,
SMBclose, SMBwritebraw, SMBgetatr, etc. Those I/O calls correspond
to the Server Message Protocol Block (SMB) that the SMBD server in
SAMBA would produce in a netbench run. The SMB protocol is used by
Microsoft Windows 3.11, NT and 95/98 to share disks and printers.

In our tests, a total of 18 different types of I/O calls were used including
open file, read, write, lock, unlock, get file attribute, set file attribute,
close, get disk free space, get file time, set file time, find open, find next,
find close, rename file, delete file, create new file, and flush file buffer.
dbench can simulate any number of clients without going through the
expense of a physical setup. dbench produces only the filesystem load,
and it does no networking calls. During a run, each client records the
number of bytes of data moved and divides this number by the amount
of time required to move the data. All client throughput scores are then
added up to determine the overall throughput for the server. The overall
I/O throughput score represents the number of megabytes per second
transferred during the test. This is a measurement of how well the
server can handle file requests from clients.
dbench is a good test for Hyper-Threading because it creates a high
load and activity on the CPU and I/O schedulers. The ability of Hyper-
Threading to support multithreaded file serving is severely tested by
dbench because many files are created and accessed simultaneously
by the clients. Each client has to create about 21 megabytes worth of
test data files. For a test run with 20 clients, about 420 megabytes of
data are expected. dbench is considered a good test to measure the
performance of the elevator algorithm used in the Linux filesystem.
dbench is used to test the working correctness of the algorithm, and
whether the elevator is aggressive enough. It is also an interesting test
 for page replacement.
tbench
tbench is another file server workload similar to dbench. However,
tbench produces only the TCP and process load. tbench does the same
socket calls that SMBD would do under a netbench load, but tbench
does no filesystem calls. The idea behind tbench is to eliminate SMBD
from the netbench test, as though the SMBD code could be made fast.
The throughput results of tbench tell us how fast a netbench run could
go if we eliminated all filesystem I/O and SMB packet processing.
tbench is built as part of the dbench package.
Hyper-Threading support in Linux kernel 2.5.x
Linux kernel 2.4.x was made aware of HT since the release of 2.4.17.
The kernel 2.4.17 knows about the logical processor, and it treats a
Hyper-Threaded processor as two physical processors. However, the
scheduler used in the stock kernel 2.4.x is still considered naive for not
being able to distinguish the resource contention problem between two
logical processors versus two separate physical processors.
Consider a system with two physical CPUs, each of which provides two
virtual processors. If there are two tasks running, the current scheduler
would let them both run on a single physical processor, even though far
better performance would result from migrating one process to the other
physical CPU. The scheduler also doesn't understand that migrating a
process from one virtual processor to its sibling (a logical CPU on the
same physical CPU) is cheaper (due to cache loading) than migrating it
across physical processors.
HT-aware passive load-balancing:
The IRQ-driven balancing has to be per-physical-CPU, not per-logical-
CPU. Otherwise, it might happen that one physical CPU runs two tasks
while another physical CPU runs no task; the stock scheduler does not
recognize this condition as "imbalance." To the scheduler, it appears as
if the first two CPUs have 1-1 task running while the second two CPUs
have 0-0 tasks running. The stock scheduler does not realize that the
two logical CPUs belong to the same physical CPU.
"Active" load-balancing:
This is when a logical CPU goes idle and causes a physical CPU
imbalance. This is a mechanism that simply does not exist in the stock
1:1 scheduler. The imbalance caused by an idle CPU can be solved via
the normal load-balancer. In the case of HT, the situation is special
because the source physical CPU might have just two tasks running,
both runnable. This is a situation that the stock load-balancer is unable
to handle, because running tasks are hard to migrate away. This
migration is essential -- otherwise a physical CPU can get stuck running
two tasks while another physical CPU stays idle.
HT-aware task pickup:
When the scheduler picks a new task, it should prefer all tasks that
share the same physical CPU before trying to pull in tasks from other
CPUs. The stock scheduler only picks tasks that were scheduled to that
particular logical CPU.
HT-aware affinity:
Tasks should attempt to "stick" to physical CPUs, not logical CPUs.
HT-aware wakeup:
The stock scheduler only knows about the "current" CPU, it does not
know about any sibling. On HT, if a thread is woken up on a logical CPU
that is already executing a task, and if a sibling CPU is idle, then the
sibling CPU has to be woken up and has to execute the newly woken-
up task immediately.
 EACH PROGRAM HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN
The OS and system hardware not only cooperate to fool the user about
the true mechanics of multi-tasking, but they cooperate to fool each
running program as well. While the user thinks that all of the currently
running programs are being executed simultaneously, each of those
programs thinks that it has a monopoly on the CPU and memory. As far
as a running program is concerned, it's the only program loaded in RAM
and the only program executing on the CPU. The program believes that
it has complete use of the machine's entire memory address space and
that the CPU is executing it continuously and without interruption. Of
course, none of this is true. The program actually shares RAM with all of
the other currently running programs, and it has to wait its turn for a
slice of CPU time in order to execute, just like all of the other programs
on the system.
A few terms: process, context, and thread
Before continuing our discussion of multiprocessing, let's take a
moment to unpack the term "program" a bit more. In most modern
operating systems, what users normally call a program would be more
technically termed a process. Associated with each process is a
context, "context" being just a catch-all term that encompasses all the
information that completely describes the process's current state of
execution (e.g. the contents of the CPU registers, the program counter,
the flags, etc.).
Processes are made up of threads, and each process consists of at
least one thread: the main thread of execution. Processes can be made
up of multiple threads, and each of these threads can have its own local
context in addition to the process's context, which is shared by all the
threads in a process. In reality, a thread is just a specific type of
stripped-down process, a "lightweight process," and because of this
throughout the rest of this article I'll use the terms "process" and
"thread" pretty much interchangeably.
Even though threads are bundled together into processes, they still
have a certain amount of independence. This independence, when
combined with their lightweight nature, gives them both speed and
flexibility. In an SMP system like the ones we'll discuss in a moment, not
only can different processes run on different processors, but different
threads from the same process can run on different processors. This is
why applications that make use of multiple threads see performance
gains on SMP systems that single-threaded applications don't

IMPLEMENTING HYPER-THREADING
Although hyper-threading might seem like a pretty large departure from
the kind of conventional, process-switching multithreading done on a
single-threaded CPU, it actually doesn't add too much complexity to the
hardware. Intel reports that adding hyper-threading to their Xeon
processor added only %5 to its die area.
Intel's Xeon is capable of executing at most two threads in parallel on
two logical processors. In order to present two logical processors to
both the OS and the user, the Xeon must be able to maintain
information for two distinct and independent thread contexts. This is
done by dividing up the processor's microarchitectural resources into
three types: replicated, partitioned, and shared.

WHAT HYPERTHREADING CAN (AND CAN'T)

 DO FOR YOU
Hyper threading . The word alone sounds like a marketing tactic, an
esoteric feature designed to convince OEMs and end users to upgrade
to the latest and greatest Intel-based systems. And to some extent,
hyperthreading is exactly that. With returns diminishing on increased
clock speeds and memory caches for the average user, But at the same
time, hyperthreading solves a real computing problem. And its
implementation in the Pentium 4 and succeeding generations of
desktop processors could spark a quiet revolution in how software is
designed
What Does It Do?
In a nutshell, hyperthreading, or simultaneous multithreading, makes a
single physical processor appear to an operating system as two logical
processors. Most software today is threaded -- that is, instructions are
split into multiple streams so that multiple processors can act on them.
With hyperthreading, a single processor can handle those multiple
streams, or threads, as if it were two processors. Without
hyperthreading, a chip would have to process the two threads
sequentially rather than simultaneously. Or it might perform time-slicing,
in which a processor rapidly shifts between running various threads at a
fixed interval, Intel spokesperson George Alfs said.

In the Chips
The first Intel chips to take advantage of hyperthreading were Xeon
server processors. But in November 2002, Intel brought hyperthreading
to the desktop with its 3.06 GHz Pentium 4. "We will be providing this
technology in additional SKUs over time," Alfs told NewsFactor. "We
intend to have hyperthreading in a majority of our desktop Pentium 4
processors." chief research officer Peter Kastner said he expected such
a move from the company. "Intel has hinted that it will push
hyperthreading technology throughout its Pentium line, making it
available to most PC buyers, not just at the top end," he told
NewsFactor.
Software Support
Of course, microprocessor improvements mean nothing without
software that can take advantage of them. For hyperthreading, software
support is in the early stages. "Buying the Pentium 4 with
hyperthreading will be an increasingly smart decision over the life of the
desktop," Kastner said. "While many applications are not optimized for
hyperthreading today, we expect that as new releases come out,
hyperthreading will become a standard feature." For software to benefit
from hyperthreading, the program must support multithreaded execution
-- that is, it must allow two distinct tasks to be executed at the same
time, vice president Steve Kleynhans told NewsFactor.

Two Paths
There are two ways to achieve this goal. The first is to write an
application that is specifically designed to be multithreaded. The second
is to run two independent applications at the same time. "People are
running multiple, mixed loads of applications on their desktops,"
Kleynhans said. "Many of those are background tasks." Both Home and
Professional Editions support hyperthreading out of the box. Numerous
other multithreaded applications also can get a boost from Intel's
hyperthreading feature, particularly content creation applications, such
as Photoshop, and video and audio encoding
 INTEL INNOVATION COULD DOUBLE CHIP POWER

Intel showed off a new chip technology will allow one chip to act like
two.
Called "hyperthreading," the new technology essentially takes
advantage of formerly unused circuitry on the Pentium 4 that lets the
chip operate far more efficiently--and almost as well as a dual-processor
computer. With it, a desktop can run two different applications
simultaneously or run a single application much faster than it would on a
standard one-processor box.
"It makes a single processor look like two processors to the operating
system," said Shannon Poulin, enterprise launch and disclosure
manager at Intel. "It effectively looks like two processors on a chip."
Paul Otellini, general manager of the Intel Architecture Group,
demonstrated the hyperthreading technology at the Intel Developer's
Forum. They showed off a 3.5GHz Pentium 4 running the computer
game "Quake 3" and managing four different video streams
simultaneously. The Pentium 4 demonstration didn't depend on Hyper-
Threading; instead, it came out as part of Intel's effort to show how
consumers and software developers will continue to need faster PCs.
"There are a lot of tremendous applications on the horizon that will
consume the MIPS (millions of instructions per second)," Otellini said.
"Gigahertz are necessary for the evolution and improvement of
computing."
Technically, hyperthreading takes advantage of additional registers--
circuits that help manage data inside a chip--that come on existing
Pentium 4's but aren't used. Through these registers, the processor can
handle more tasks at once by taking better advantage of its own
resources. The chip can direct instructions from one application on its
floating-point unit, which is where the heavy math is done, and run parts
of another application through its integer unit. A chip with
hyperthreading won't equal the computing power of two Pentium 4's, but
the performance boost is substantial, Poulin said. A workstation with
hyperthreaded Xeon chips running Alias-Wavefront, a graphics
application, has achieved a 30 percent improvement in tests, he said.
Servers with hyperthreaded chips can manage 30 percent more users.
Will developers climb aboard?
The open question is whether software developers will latch onto the
idea. Software applications will need to be rewritten to take advantage
of hyperthreading, and getting developers to tweak their products can
take an enormous amount of time. Intel, for instance, has been working
for well over a year to get developers to rewrite their programs to take
full advantage of the features of the Pentium 4, which has been out for
approximately nine months. The company even changed the migration
program to speed the process of optimizing Pentium III applications for
the Pentium 4.
Still, to date, only 30 applications have been enhanced to take full
advantage of the Pentium 4, according to Louis Burns, vice president
and general manager of the Desktop Platforms Group at Intel. But more
are on the way, he said. Otellini acknowledged that recruiting
developers will take time.
"The real key is going to be to get the applications threaded, and that
takes a lot of work," he said. Nonetheless, adopting the technology to
server and workstations applications should be fairly easy if the
application already runs on dual-processor systems, other Intel officials
said. "Thread your applications and drivers and OSes to take advantage
 of this relatively free performance," Otellini asked developers during his
speech.
Hyperthreading, which will appear in servers and workstations in 2002
and desktops in 2003, is part of an overall Intel strategy to find new
ways to squeeze more performance out of silicon. For years, the
company has largely relied on boosting the clock speed and tweaking
parts of the chip's architecture to eke out gains. The performance gains
to be achieved from boosting the clock speed, however, are limited. In
all practicality, most users won't experience that much realistic
difference between a 1GHz computer and one that contains a 2GHz
chip, according to, among others, Dean McCarron, an analyst at
Mercury Research.
Ideally, hyperthreading, which has been under development for four and
a half years, will show meatier benefits. An individual could play games
while simultaneously downloading multimedia files from the Internet with
a computer containing the technology, Poulin predicted. Hyperthreaded
chips would also be cheaper than dual-processor computers. "You only
need one heat sink, one fan, one cooling solution," he said, along with,
of course, one chip. Chips running hyperthreading have been produced,
and both Microsoft's Windows XP and Linux can take advantage of the
technology, according to Poulin. Computers containing a single
hyperthreaded chip differ from dual-processor computers in that two
applications can't take advantage of the same processor substructure at
the same time. "Only one gets to use the floating point at a single time,"
Poulin said.
On other fronts, Intel on Tuesday also unveiled Machine Check
Architecture, which allows servers to catch data errors more efficiently.
The company will also demonstrate McKinley for the first time. McKinley
is the code name for the next version of Itanium, Intel's 64-bit chip that
competes against Sun's UltraSparc. McKinley is due in demonstration
systems by the end of this year.
CONCLUSION
Intel Xeon Hyper-Threading is definitely having a positive impact on
Linux kernel and multithreaded applications. The speed-up from Hyper-
Threading could be as high as 30% in stock kernel 2.4.19, to 51% in
kernel 2.5.32 due to drastic changes in the scheduler run queue's
support and Hyper-Threading awareness. Today with Hyper-Threading
Technology, processor-level threading can be utilized which offers more
efficient use of processor resources for greater parallelism and
improved performance on today's multi-threaded software.

REFERENCES
• http://www.google.com
• http://www.intel.com
• http://www.arstechnica.com
CONTENTS
1. INTRODUCTION
2. UTILIZATION OF PROCESSOR RESOURCES
3. HYPER-THREADING TECHNOLOGY IMPROVES PERFORMANCE
4. MULTI-THREADED APPLICATIONS
5. .MULTIPROCESSOR PERFORMANCE ON A SINGLE
PROCESSOR
6. HYPER-THREADING SPEEDS LINUX
7. EACH PROGRAM HAS A MIND OF ITS OWN
8. IMPLEMENTING HYPER-THREADING
9. WORKING OF HYPERTHREADING
 10. WHAT HYPERTHREADING CAN (AND CAN'T) DO FOR YOU
11. INTEL INNOVATION COULD DOUBLE CHIP POWER
12. CONCLUTION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I express my sincere thanks to Prof. M.N Agnisarman Namboothiri

Reference: http://www.seminarprojects.com/Thread-hyper-threading-seminar-report#ixzz0mmKIB2jQ