CPU Cores VS Threads Explained

how's it going guys welcome to another video and this is going to be a quick explanation on the differences between cores and threads and a computer CPU so let's start with just the CPU itself for example let's say we have a four core CPU now each of these cores I like to think of as workers to explain this so each process information each perform tasks each basically do what the operating system tells them to do so the OS or the operating system is kind of like the boss and each core is a worker so threads on the other hand they're kind of like sequences of commands given to the cores so you can think of threads as let's say conveyor belts of products being sent to the worker now that we understand like the general purpose of threads and cores it's important to know the difference between what a physical core is and what a logical core is so a physical core is kind of what it sounds like it's physically on the CPU it's the actual Hardware on the CPU itself a logical core is more like code it exists in the computer but it's in a sense logic cores are basically the threads of the computer so for example if you have a processor with 4 cores and 4 threads you'll have 4 logical cores you also have 4 physical cores that doesn't mean you have a total of 8 that means you have 4 and 4 they're basically known as the same thing in that case but now if you have a processor with 4 cores and 8 threads well then if you were asked how many logical cores you have you could say 8 logical cores but you still only have 4 physical ones so logical cores are basically the different like the amount of pathways that you're see or that your computer has to process information so you can think of it that way so physical cores still remain 4 but since you have 8 threads you actually have 8 logical cores because there's eight ways for logic or you know information to get processed through your computer all right so now we got that out of the way what happens when your CPU has more threads than its cores like in that case well this would be giving like a worker in this case two lines of conveyor belt products so like they have two different conveyor belts in front of them with products going by so for example let's go back to the fork or a thread processor this will have two threads per core so each core can take on two different threads of commands now it's for a single core it can only have two threads to work from so during normal operation like CP operations usually you won't see continuous execution on a single thread so there's these little small gaps existing that cause like downtime between it because the computer can be running into resource errors or not errors but like they're waiting on resources so memory could be caching or other things can be happening to where the CPU isn't 100% active all the time now this is where the advantage of having that second thread comes from so you might have only one core but having the second thread gives the processor this efficiency so while the core is in this downtime on the first thread it can switch over to the second thread and work on another task so then once it's resources for the first thread it can go back so I get it loses resources so it's waiting on the computer to catch up switches threads gos works on another one and then comes back so for in the case of the worker and the conveyor belt this is basically like a worker running out of products on one line and turns over and starts working on products from another line while they wait for the other conveyor belt to catch up with more products alright so that's pretty much the gist of it all the four cores will work simultaneously and this is called parallel operations but the cores themselves can't work on multiple threads so the cores themselves are going to need a switch between us between single threads at a time so the switching between these threads is what we call concurrent execution so it mimics the parallel execution that each core is operating at so obviously you're not gonna get the same efficiency as you would have let's say a fork or a thread processor versus an eight-core a thread processor that would be a little different but you can see how multiple threads per core still help to get the full efficiency out of each core they're not the same as an actual core otherwise known as physical core if you want to use that terminology but I can they can enhance performance by filling in all these little gaps of downtime and basically giving you the most efficient way of processing information and that's basically it guys I don't like going to in-depth on these so we're not going to go into like actual to streaming and where the data goes but I hope this helps understand or helps you understand the differences between the core and the thread because sometimes they can get confusing and people are like oh yeah good you know eight cores logical processors but it's really just their threads anyways you have any question guys please leave them below in the comments I'll try to get to them if you're not subscribed please do so very much appreciated and [Music]

Channel: Max's Tech

Views: 497,094

Rating: 4.9197726 out of 5

Keywords: Max, Comp, Tips, laptop, computer, tech, how, to, software, hardware, easy, threads, cores, cpu, processor, explained, difference, comparison, clock, four, eight, more, thread, line, amd, intel, better

Id: hwTYDQ0zZOw

Length: 5min 0sec (300 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 10 2018