It's worth noting that in SMT2 mode, it's still 2 threads dynamically scheduled across all 4 slices. It's only in SMT4 mode that it starts statically partition

It's worth noting that in SMT2 mode, it's still 2 threads dynamically scheduled across all 4 slices. It's only in SMT4 mode that it starts statically partitioning the threads onto superslices. Even then, it's two threads sharing two slices. I assume the static patitioning is an optimisation, that preformance increases due to the split L1d caches (and I'm guessing there is a delay cycle when one slice depends on data from another, I haven't read the documentation that closely). It's the fact that slices can be dynamically scheduled across all four slices which makes it "not bulldozer" in my mind, and I don't think the presence of a mode that does statically partition superslices should make it "like bulldozer", even if that is the most common mode. It's just an optimisation. > I'm not even sure how easy or hard it is to switch into SMT1 to SMT2 or SMT4 modes. Idealy, the CPU core would dynamically drop down to SMT1 or SMT2 mode whenever the the extra threads are executing idle instruction.