Multithreading - are the multi-core processors really doing parallel processing?
- by so.very.tired
Are the modern multi-core processors really doing parallel processing?
Like, take for example, Intel's core i7 processors. some of them has #of Cores: 4 and #of Threads: 8 (taken from Intel's specifications pages). If I to write a program (say in Java or C) that has multiple threads of execution, will they really be processed concurrently? My instructor said that "it is not always the case with multi-core processors", but didn't gave to much details.
And why do Intel have to specify both #of Cores and #of Threads? Isn't thread just a term that describe a program-related abstraction, unlike "cores" which are actual hardware? ("Every thread runs on different core").