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Multithreading - What's it Mean to Developers?

sysadmn writes "Yet another reason not to count Sun out: Chip Multithreading. CMT, as Sun calls it, is the use of hardware to assist in the execution of multiple simultaneous tasks - even on a single processor. This excellent tutorial on Sun's Developer site explains the technology, and why throughput has become more important than absolute speed in the enterprise. From the intro: Chip multi-threading (CMT) brings to hardware the concept of multi-threading, similar to software multi-threading. ... A CMT-enabled processor, similar to software multi-threading, executes many software threads simultaneously within a processor on cores. So in a system with CMT processors, software threads can be executed simultaneously within one processor or across many processors. Executing software threads simultaneously within a single processor increases a processor's efficiency as wait latencies are minimized. "

5 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    fp

  2. Re:Bad bad English headline by pclminion · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    "What's" is a common contraction of "What does." The fact that it is used, heavily, in American speech is evidence enough of this. In British English, who knows.

  3. Re:Bad bad English headline by slavemowgli · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    That's not bad english per se; it's just rather informal.

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    quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
  4. Software:Hardware thread mapper by Doc+Ruby · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    gcc: the world's most complex macro-assembler.

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    make install -not war

  5. Re:Sun's new chips by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I can have eight whores now?! This Viagra stuff is great!

    What? Cores, Niagra? I don't get this...