MBA Intel i5 Question

[tehsprayer]

the new haswell chip on the apple website specifies that it is dual core but...does it come with hyper-threading meaning it is quad core?

 

[simsaladimbamba]

It comes with HT, thus it has four virtual cores, but it is still a quad core.

 

[ok.Eric]

Hopefully someone will give you a better answer, but the way I understand it is that it has 2 physical cores, but each of those cores has 2 virtual cores.. I probably butchered that bad, but it's something like that.

 

[S.B.G]

the new haswell chip on the apple website specifies that it is dual core but...does it come with hyper-threading meaning it is quad core?

I don't think so, otherwise Apple would state quad-core like they do for their iMac and other lines of computers.

After looking it up on the Intel site, it has 2 cores and 4 threads.

 

[Suraj R.]

the new haswell chip on the apple website specifies that it is dual core but...does it come with hyper-threading meaning it is quad core?

Yeah it does, its a dual core with hyperthreading, just as with all mobile i5 and i7 processors. The Quad Core i5 iMacs are only quad core (no hyper threading) because desktop i5s don't have hyperthreading.

But yes, it does have hyperthreading so essentially it is a 1.3 Quad Core.

 

[tehsprayer]

Yeah it does, its a dual core with hyperthreading, just as with all mobile i5 and i7 processors. The Quad Core i5 iMacs are only quad core (no hyper threading) because desktop i5s don't have hyperthreading.

But yes, it does have hyperthreading so essentially it is a 1.3 Quad Core.

Since it has hyperthreading and turbo boost, essentially it is a 2.6 GHz Quad Core.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Just to clarify, threads and cores are the same thing?

 

[ZBoater]

Just to clarify, threads and cores are the same thing?

Short answer, no.

Longer answer - http://www.amd.com/us/Documents/Cores_vs_Threads_Whitepaper.pdf

Cores > Threads.

 

[S.B.G]

Since it has hyperthreading and turbo boost, essentially it is a 2.6 GHz Quad Core.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Just to clarify, threads and cores are the same thing?

Not exactly.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/306079-28-what-core-thread

A thread is a single line of commands that are getting processed, each application has at least one thread, most have multiples. A core is the physical hardware that works on the thread. In general a processor can only work on one thread per core, CPUs with hyper threading can work on up to two threads per core.

For processors with hyper threading, there are extra registers and execution units in the core so it can store the state of two threads and work on them both, normally to change threads you have to empty the registers into the cache, write that back to the main memory, then load up the cache with the new values and load up the registers, context switches hurt performance significantly.

 

[mattferg]

Since it has hyperthreading and turbo boost, essentially it is a 2.6 GHz Quad Core.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Just to clarify, threads and cores are the same thing?

Um, no, it's a 1.3ghz dual core and will operate as one for the most part.

Imagine the cores as being a 2x speed multiplier and the threads being 1.5x at best.

 

[jdechko]

Not to mention the fact that you can only hit the 2.6 Turbo with a single core and 2.3 with a dual core.

Source: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7021/introducing-the-dualcore-haswell-skus

Core i5-4250U For reference