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It reads like classic FUD material. They cast doubt on the technology yet they don't mention you can disable SMT in the BIOS of an Intel system. It also doesn't
by jsz0 17y ago
It reads like classic FUD material. They cast doubt on the technology yet they don't mention you can disable SMT in the BIOS of an Intel system. It also doesn't answer the most obvious question: What if I want 8-12 cores and the possible +20% performance of SMT?
- JF-AMD 17y agoWe have looked into that, but that is not our strategy. If we knew that SMT (in an x86 architecture) could lead to an "always better performance" environment, it might be more applealing. But the fact that the performance aspect becomes application dependent (and there are possible stability situations), we defer to no SMT. If future implementations do a better job it would be something to consider. For now we believe that actual cores will drive better performance. If I can put 12 cores into the same price and power envelopes (or even lower) as my competitor's 6-core with SMT, I end up with a better processor. Cores vs. SMT breaks down if your cores are consuming significantly more power or you are driving your cost up. But if you are not doing those things, than cores over SMT becomes the right call.