AI engineering glossary · Computing foundations
What is SMT (hyper-threading)?
Hyper-threading (also called Simultaneous multithreading, SMT): An Intel technology that lets one physical CPU core present itself as two logical cores, so it can run two threads and fill idle execution slots. It improves throughput for some workloads but does not double performance.
Hyper-threading: an example
A 4-core CPU with hyper-threading appears to the operating system as 8 logical processors.
Related terms
More Computing foundations terms
- Hypervisor
- IEEE 754
- Inode
- Instruction cycle
- Instruction set architecture
- Integer overflow
- Inter-process communication
- Interpreter
Where you learn it
Hyper-threading is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.