All cores on processors that are later than 6th generation x86 are logical or virtual cores.
- They interpret x86 instructions into microcode, and have various resources available at their disposal.
- Marketing just spins it regarding SMT and CMT.
- Compared to Athlon K7 the CMT on the AMD FX series would have AMD's own engineers calling it a tri-core processor with CMT. (Scales better than SMT, but each core is weaker overall, so the potential scaling barely covers the loss).
Some x86/x64 cores are just far more complete than others... I mean gaming with half an FPU per pair of otherwise 'nearly' complete CPU cores?
- That is madness
- No.... this is SPARCaaaaaaa (joke, no-one will get it).
- No really, it is madness.
But wow, eight cores!
- Looks nice on the box and sells low transistor count cores to the end consumer, mostly game console buyers.
Here's a real 8 core processor:
- http://ark.intel.com/products/64596/