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When I do cat /proc/cpuinfo I get the folowing information printed below. Can I conclude from this information that there are 8 cores in my machine? I am interested in doing some parallel programming using OpenMP which is supposed to use all the cores of the CPU to do some computations.

There are 8 such processors listed in the information(which I assume means cores). But I am confised because there is a field in each block which says cpu cores 4.

processor   : 0
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 26
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         960  @ 3.20GHz
stepping    : 5
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cache size  : 8192 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 8
core id     : 0
cpu cores   : 4
apicid      : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 11
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips    : 6415.99
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 1
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 26
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         960  @ 3.20GHz
stepping    : 5
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cache size  : 8192 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 8
core id     : 1
cpu cores   : 4
apicid      : 2
initial apicid  : 2
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 11
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips    : 6415.95
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 2
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 26
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         960  @ 3.20GHz
stepping    : 5
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cache size  : 8192 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 8
core id     : 2
cpu cores   : 4
apicid      : 4
initial apicid  : 4
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 11
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips    : 6415.91
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 3
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 26
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         960  @ 3.20GHz
stepping    : 5
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cache size  : 8192 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 8
core id     : 3
cpu cores   : 4
apicid      : 6
initial apicid  : 6
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 11
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips    : 6415.93
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 4
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 26
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         960  @ 3.20GHz
stepping    : 5
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cache size  : 8192 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 8
core id     : 0
cpu cores   : 4
apicid      : 1
initial apicid  : 1
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 11
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips    : 6415.91
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 5
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 26
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         960  @ 3.20GHz
stepping    : 5
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cache size  : 8192 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 8
core id     : 1
cpu cores   : 4
apicid      : 3
initial apicid  : 3
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 11
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips    : 6415.91
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 6
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 26
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         960  @ 3.20GHz
stepping    : 5
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cache size  : 8192 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 8
core id     : 2
cpu cores   : 4
apicid      : 5
initial apicid  : 5
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 11
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips    : 6415.91
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

processor   : 7
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 26
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU         960  @ 3.20GHz
stepping    : 5
cpu MHz     : 1600.000
cache size  : 8192 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 8
c    ore id     : 3
cpu cores   : 4
apicid      : 7
initial apicid  : 7
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 11
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt lahf_lm ida dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips    : 6415.91
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

2 Answers 2

2

Purely for the sake of OpenMP yes you can safely assume you have 8 threads available. However realistically you should be reading the line

cpu cores : 4

Under each CPU Core information. Th reason you are seeing 8 processors is you have a Quad Code CPU with Hyper Threading. i.e 4 x 2 = 8 Threads.

2

An i7 960 has 4 cores. There are 8 threads though because each core is hyper threaded. But only 4 PHYSICAL cores. 8 virtual cores.

More detail on that processor here:

http://ark.intel.com/products/37151

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