Conclusion & Resources

Intel Xeon Hyper-Threading is definitely having a positive impact on Linux kernel and multithreaded applications. The speed-up from Hyper-Threading could be as high as 30% in stock kernel 2.4.19, to 51% in kernel 2.5.32 due to drastic changes in the scheduler run queue's support and Hyper-Threading awareness.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
The author would like to thank Intel's Sunil Saxena for invaluable information gleaned at the LinuxWorld Conference Session Performance tuning for threaded applications -- with a look at Hyper-Threading at the LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco, August 2002.

• Get more information from SCO on the AIM benchmarks.
  
  
• You can download the chat benchmark from the Linux Benchmark Suite Homepage.
  
  
• The README file from dbench is courtesy of SAMBA.
  
  
• More information on LMbench can be found at the LMbench home page.
  
  
• The home of the Ziff-Davis NetBench benchmarking test gives more details of their test suite.
  
  
• The Linux elevator algorithm is discussed in the November 23, 2000 edition of the Linux Weekly News Kernel Development section.
  
  
• A paper on Hyper-Threading Technology Architecture and Microarchitecture by Marr, D.T., et al. from the Intel Technology Journal provides more details on Hyper-Threading's inner workings.
  
  
• An August 2002 note on Hyper-Threading posted by Ingo Molnar to the kernel list is reprinted in the Linux Weekly News.
  
  
• Another August 2002 LWN article also discusses the scheduler and Hyper-Threading (among other things).
  
  
• Intel's whitepaper (in PDF format) Hyper-Threading technology on the Intel Xeon processor family for servers is another good source for details on the architectural details behind Hyper-Threading.
  
  
• Learn about IBM's developer contributions to Linux at the IBM Linux Technology Center.
  
  
• Find more resources for Linux developers in the developerWorks Linux zone.