Multicore Hyperthreading and the Task Manager

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SlyNine

Member
Sep 15, 2003
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0
I guess I'm confused about your use of the word light, light is just a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, Is that not the same thing as all electricity? Therefore wouldn't the speed of light (C) threw that medium be the speed at which electrons travel.

When ever people talk about the speed of light, I believe they simply mean the speed that energy waves travel and not the frequency of said waves.
 
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Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: SlyNine
I guess I'm confused about your use of the word light, light is just a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, Is that not the same thing as all electricity? Therefore wouldn't the speed of light (C) threw that medium be the speed at which electrons travel.

When ever people talk about the speed of light, I believe they simply mean the speed that energy waves travel and not the frequency of said waves.
Click to expand...

You are referring to visible light, which is a photon with enough energy that it is detected by the photoreceptors in our retina. These photons have wavelengths between 380nm and 760nm.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum

Photons comprise the entire electromagnetic spectrum. The speed of light in any medium other than a vacuum is wavelength dependent and is characterized by the index of refraction. The higher the index of refraction the slower the speed of light at that wavelength (energy) in that medium.

Electricity is not photons, photons do not possess charge. Electricity is electrons, electrons posses charge.

As I mentioned in my post on the topic it is possible to have electrons travel faster than the speed of light in a medium other than a vacuum, known as Cerenkov radiation. It is really quite a beautiful irridescent glow, if you ever have the opportunity to see it I recommend it, it is very peaceful to see in person.

At any rate just because it is possible in special cases to make an electron travel faster than the speed of light does not make for a general broad-sweeping statement that electricity travels at the speed of light. No commercial methods of transmitting electricity do so at, or faster than, the speed of light...not even superconductivity makes the electrons travel anywhere close to the speed of light even in the medium of conduction.
 
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SlyNine

Member
Sep 15, 2003
46
0
0
The more I think of this the more I think of schroders cat.

I thought that a photon was an electron, just one that our eyes responded to. But then again we can't really tell what an electron or photon really is in the first place, wave or particle.

When you say an electron posses a charge, what is that exactly, do you mean like positively or negatively charged ?
 
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Jovec

Senior member
Feb 24, 2008
579
2
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Originally posted by: palladium
Yeh pretty sure F@H only uses 4 threads. HT allows you to run 2 of those SMP clients, but I usually run one and use the other 4 ( logical) cores for gaming, movies, etc. I always assign F@H to CPUs 4-7 ( 2 physical+ 2 virtual). In my case, if I turn off HT, my F@H would only have 2 logical cores to run on ( since I need the other 2 cores), and I'm pretty sure ( haven't done any tests yet) F@H SMP would run faster on 4 logical cores compared to 2, even though the actual physical core count is only 2 in both cases ( Linpack would not, however).
Click to expand...

I wonder how much trouble F@H would have keeping the execution units at or near 100% utilization. Purely a guess, but probably not too much, and you might be losing more than you think having to push/pop register values to and from the stack. Might be interesting to test your performance with 2 cores versus 2+HT.
 
I

Idontcare

Elite Member
Oct 10, 1999
21,110
59
91
Originally posted by: SlyNine
The more I think of this the more I think of schroders cat.

I thought that a photon was an electron, just one that our eyes responded to. But then again we can't really tell what an electron or photon really is in the first place, wave or particle.

When you say an electron posses a charge, what is that exactly, do you mean like positively or negatively charged ?
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_model

The difference between a photon and an electron can not be more fundamental.

Different charge, different spin, fermion (lepton) vs. boson, etc etc.

Schrödinger's cat is a whole different ball of wax.
 
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