64 processors?

64 processors?

Posted Sep 25, 2007 19:09 UTC (Tue) by csnook (subscriber, #36935)
In reply to: 64 processors? by deater
Parent article: What every programmer should know about memory, Part 1

Hyperthreading is generally not a win on workloads that are already well-optimized. If the application is making effective use of the cache, and is compiled to minimize pipeline bubbles, hyperthreading will just reduce your cache hit rate.

The problem that Hyperthreading solves quite well is workloads that cannot be well-optimized because they react to unpredictable external events, as is the case with web servers. It's also beneficial on desktop systems where having only one CPU can harm interactivity while background tasks are running, but in the age of multicore CPUs that won't be much of an issue.

As a rule of thumb, the more performance tuning you're doing on a system, the more likely it is you'll want to disable Hyperthreading. HPC nodes and centralized database servers definitely suffer, while build systems and static web servers definitely benefit.

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