I have a Dell desktop running Windows 7 Professional. I think the processor is an Intel Core i7-2600
Recently a computer expert who specializes in Linux clusters was looking at my desktop PC and commented off-hand that my machine has 8 threads. He said that meant the machine has 4 cores: 2 threads per core. I had been unaware that the machine had more than one core.
Now that I know the machine apparently has four cores I am hoping to run maybe three models simultaneously, one model on each of three core.
Someone suggested that I "turn off the hyperthreading" so that I "can use the whole core per model". Otherwise, he wrote "it runs at half speed".
I run many models using Program R and the computer gentleman who was helping me pointed out that one of my R script files displayed a message saying it was using 7 of 8 threads. So, given that the R file was using 2 threads per core with three of the cores maybe turning off hyperthreading would not increase computation speed in my case?
If turning off hyperthreading would increase computation speed of the R scripts, how could I do that?
I searched the internet a little bit and found a discussion on the subject at this forum:
One comment at that forum that concerns me is the claim that:
"The biggest problem for those who want to shut down HT, is that a lot of computer manufacturers (HP, Dell) don't allow the people who buy their computers the BIOS option to shut down HT. And since windows looks at the HT setting in BIOS to determine whether to handle HT, it's a case of being stuck in low gear, and no ability to shift up."
Since my computer is a Dell, perhaps I am not able to turn off hyper-threading.
I also found this post on Superuser:
Disable Hyperthreading in the Windows 7 registry
One answer there seemed particularly helpful, but complex, dealing with hexadecimals, and the computer in question was an HP. I do not know whether that matters.
There appear to be quite a few other posts here about hyperthreads, but the one immediately above comes closest to my situation of those I have read.
Sorry if this question is a duplicate. If I need to provide additional information or clarify my concerns I will gladly do so.