brent timothy saner wrote:
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brent timothy saner wrote:
Art Alexion wrote:
Anyway, htop reports the atom as dual core and actually shows different
processor use for each of the cores. I don't think that is accurate.
cat /proc/cpuinfo
if you see two processors, it's dual core.
additionally, if it's a Silverthorne (Z series), it's definitely
single-core. if it's a Diamondville (N, 200, 300 series) it's definitely
dual-core. this information can be determined via /proc/cpuinfo and was
collected from the wikipedia article mentioned in the previous thread.
whoops, small correction. only SOME of the N-series, it seems, are
dual-core.
I have an N270, and it is definitely single core according to a
well-cited Wikipedia article, but it shows up as two CPUs because it
supports hyperthreading.
I have an circa 2003 dual Xeon box that has four penguins at the top of
the screen when booting, in spite of having only two physical CPUs,
because those CPUs (which were made long before the advent of dual-core
systems) still have hyperthreading.
To respond to the original question, I'm currently running Ubuntu on an
Eee 901 with the N270. The Atom is perfectly capable of exeuting x86
code. What Intel did to keep the power drain down, instead of changing
architectures, is use in-order execution to make the CPU much
simpler. All other Intel CPUs have used out of order execution, for
the past several generations, but it has substantial power costs
relative to the performance gains, so Intel didn't use it in the Atom.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_order_execution for more
detailed information.
--Gordon
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