[SOLVED] What does number of cores per processor mean exactly ?

[jefazo92]

Hi everyone,

The way I understand a CPU (also known as processors) is that it is an actual physical component. Now, CPUs can have multiple cores, which are the processing units used to carry out tasks ( I am not sure if an single l task means a single program) and can be from 1 to many. Cores can be used for multitasting aka parallel programming. Now each core has 1 to many threads which can be used for concurrent programming within 1 core since threads are used for carrying out sub-tasks and contribute to parallel programming. I am not sure if I anything I wrote until this point is correct so I would really appreciate it if you could correct me if I'm worng since all these terms are explained very loosely on the internet.

Now the issue I am facing is that I have an Intel Core i7 laptop and I am trying to determine the No. of cores and CPUs in my machine. However, task manager says that I have 4 cores and 8 logic processors (aka CPUs) which makes no sense to me since there should more logic processors as they are physical components rather than cores (which are found within logic processors).

Also I am trying to instal Ubuntu in VMWare but I am not sure how many processors and cores per processor I should assign to ensure optimal opartion. I don't want to use the VM for heavy stuff, I only want to build a small FTP server which can be accessed through TOR Hidden Services as a project and, perhaps, for some Linux programs/commands I need to execute. Please I would really appreciate it if you could help me out here. Thanks in advance.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Give it two cores and two gig ram

run CPUz to see how many cores and threads per core you have. A small Linux VM won’t take much resources 2 gigs of ram and 2 cores should be enough

 

[USAFRet]

Hi everyone,

The way I understand a CPU (also known as processors) is that it is an actual physical component. Now, CPUs can have multiple cores, which are the processing units used to carry out tasks ( I am not sure if an single l task means a single program) and can be from 1 to many. Cores can be used for multitasting aka parallel programming. Now each core has 1 to many threads which can be used for concurrent programming within 1 core since threads are used for carrying out sub-tasks and contribute to parallel programming. I am not sure if I anything I wrote until this point is correct so I would really appreciate it if you could correct me if I'm worng since all these terms are explained very loosely on the internet.

Now the issue I am facing is that I have an Intel Core i7 laptop and I am trying to determine the No. of cores and CPUs in my machine. However, task manager says that I have 4 cores and 8 logic processors (aka CPUs) which makes no sense to me since there should more logic processors as they are physical components rather than cores (which are found within logic processors).

Also I am trying to instal Ubuntu in VMWare but I am not sure how many processors and cores per processor I should assign to ensure optimal opartion. I don't want to use the VM for heavy stuff, I only want to build a small FTP server which can be accessed through TOR Hidden Services as a project and, perhaps, for some Linux programs/commands I need to execute. Please I would really appreciate it if you could help me out here. Thanks in advance.

Which specific CPU is it?
How much physical RAM is in this system?

 

[Karadjgne]

Cpu = central processing unit. It's just called The processor for short, but that's not really totally accurate. Cpu is all the cores and processors and cache combined.

Same goes for gpu, the gpu is actually the graphics processing unit, the actual physical die, not the entire card which is a video card or graphics card, not specifically a gpu.

 

[Math Geek]

for your purposes you have 4 cores which are capable of 2 threads per core. hence the 8 "logical" cores. so the system thinks it has 8 "cores" and works accordingly.

if you give 2 cores to the vm as suggested above that does not mean 2 physical cores but could actually be a single core and both of its possible "threads" that is really not for you to decide but the software and pc will figure it out and make sure the vm has what you assigned it.

the "cpu" is basically a name we have agreed on to mean the entire package which includes the various cores, cache, controllers and so on that make up a full cpu. the rest of the terms can be used in various ways depending on what is being talked about. so "processor" can mean multiple things depending on what is being discussed. i am sure there is a "well technically, a processor is only a ......" type answer but unless you are trying to be sheldon cooper, no one really uses these terms in the exact way they truly mean

a core itself is actually a bunch of smaller components that include the individual parts that actually do the work with the 1's and 0's. you can google it and easily find a breakdown of what a single "core" of a modern cpu is actually made from.

 

[jefazo92]

Thanks a lot for your replies I really appreciate it !

 

[hotaru.hino]

Now the issue I am facing is that I have an Intel Core i7 laptop and I am trying to determine the No. of cores and CPUs in my machine. However, task manager says that I have 4 cores and 8 logic processors (aka CPUs) which makes no sense to me since there should more logic processors as they are physical components rather than cores (which are found within logic processors).

The reason they're called "logical processors" instead of say "threads" is mostly to keep things simple. As far as scheduling work goes, software just knows that there are a number of units of execution it can give work to. Rather than try to come up with a way to say "this is really Core 0, thread 0/1", the CPU exposes itself as having 8 "processors." The CPU itself handles all of the heavy lifting of resource management in the background so the OS doesn't have to keep tabs on this.

A lot of hardware exposes itself to software in simple terms so that programming for it remains relatively easy. Another example of this is how memory management works. As far as a user application is concerned, with a 64-bit processor, the entire 64-bit address space (i.e., 16 exabytes worth) is available for use. But in reality, the hardware and OS hides things behind the application's back to translate what the application wants to what it actually gets.

Also I am trying to instal Ubuntu in VMWare but I am not sure how many processors and cores per processor I should assign to ensure optimal opartion. I don't want to use the VM for heavy stuff, I only want to build a small FTP server which can be accessed through TOR Hidden Services as a project and, perhaps, for some Linux programs/commands I need to execute. Please I would really appreciate it if you could help me out here. Thanks in advance.

I'm not sure how VMWare lets you configure how many cores to assign to a VM, but I know for VirtualBox it treats logical processors as regular processors. As for how many to assign, start with two and if performance isn't satisfactory, add another two.

Or add one more, having even numbers is just an OCD thing for me