Why does iStat show what looks like 4 cores?

[Michael CM1]

I just bought a new iMac with the i3 processor. On my MacBook Pro with a C2D, iStat showed two graphs for my processor cores, which I expected on a dual-core CPU. But now on iStat, it shows four graphs. I am pretty sure the i3 isn't quad-core. Does anybody know why iStat would do this? I know I read that the i3 does hyper-threading, but I don't think that would simulate four cores. Thanks for any answers.

 

[killmoms]

Hyper-threading = virtual cores. So they show up as cores in Activity Monitor.

 

[sammich]

Hyper-threading is a feature that makes a single core appear as two logical cores to the Operating System. So that makes 2 cores x 2 logical cores = 4.

 

[Michael CM1]

Gotcha. Thanks for the quick answers!