Compaq W8000 Hyper-Threading Technology, New Feature of Intel Xeon Processor - Page 21

Hyper-Threading Technology, New Feature of Intel Xeon Processor White Paper 21 On the down side, the existing single threaded applications do not experience the benefit of Hyper-Threading technology. In fact, there can sometimes be disruption by the alternative thread, such as the thread that uses a spin lock without pause instruction. Multi-threaded applications that are optimized for MP systems also need to consider resource contention that destroys the effectiveness of hand-tuned highly optimized code (games and streaming media applications). Hyper-Threading technology can provide a performance gain of up to 30% when executing under multi-threaded OS and applications with code that is tuned for Hyper-Threaded3 technology over a comparable IA-32 processor without Hyper-Threading technology. For workstation applications that are more multi-tasked and more memory intensive, there is more benefit to using two physical processors as compared to using a single Hyper-Threading technology enabled processor. 3 Tuned instructions for Hyper-threaded is minimize the resource contention 167T-0202A-WWEN