SMP support for Win XP Pro

[Tony]

Does Windows XP Pro support multiple processors ?
If not what workstaion class OS does ?

Best Regards...
Tony

 

[Pete Baker]

Tony

XP Home does *not* support physically separate processors. It does,
however, support hyper-threading which creates 2 logical (or virtual)
processors which share the workload. These will then appear as two
identical processors in XP despite only one physical processor being
present.

XP Pro supports 2 physically separate processors AND hyper-threading.

hope that helps
Pete

 

[Guest]

Pete

Thanks thats great

Best Regards
Tony

-----Original Message-----
Tony

XP Home does *not* support physically separate processors. It does,
however, support hyper-threading which creates 2 logical (or virtual)
processors which share the workload. These will then appear as two
identical processors in XP despite only one physical processor being
present.

XP Pro supports 2 physically separate processors AND hyper-threading.

hope that helps
Pete
-----------------

"Tony" < wrote in message


.

 

[Tony]

Pete

Just a futher question on SMP support.
Would any app that ran on this architecture then need to
be written from scratch with SMP in mind or will XP do the
work. I cant help think that the app would need to be
constructed in a way that is was possible to break
processing down from say a serial stream of instructions
to a parrallel stream of instructions.

Or am I worring about nothing and XP Pro will use the
additional processing power for all apps if a second
processor is there ?

Thanks once again
Best Regards..
Tony

 

[Pete Baker]

Tony

As I understand it, and I'm sure other posters will correct me on this if
I'm wrong, the applications would need to written to be able to make use of
the dual processors, or even hyperthreading, to gain any advantage in speed
over a single processor system. If in doubt about a particular application
check their website for details of the systems they support.

Hope that helps
Pete

 

[Tony]

Pete

Thanks for the advise

Regards
Tony

-----Original Message-----
Tony

As I understand it, and I'm sure other posters will correct me on this if
I'm wrong, the applications would need to written to be able to make use of
the dual processors, or even hyperthreading, to gain any advantage in speed
over a single processor system. If in doubt about a particular application
check their website for details of the systems they support.

Hope that helps
Pete
--------------------

"Tony" wrote in message


.

 

[Nik Simpson]

Tony

As I understand it, and I'm sure other posters will correct me on
this if I'm wrong, the applications would need to written to be able
to make use of the dual processors, or even hyperthreading, to gain
any advantage in speed over a single processor system.

Slight oversimplification, but close. A non-threaded app (one not
specifically written to take advantage of multiple CPUs) doesn't benefit
directly from the second processor, but in many cases it will get an
indirect benefit becuase other system tasks (i.e. operating system
functions) like networking or graphics etc that might interrupt the
application can be handled by by the other CPU. So in many cases there will
be a benefit even fora single threaded application.