[hashcash] Re: parallel hashcash proof of concept

>>>>> "Hal" == "Hal Finney" <hal@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:

[...]

Hal> Unfortunately there wasn't much difference.  Maybe a tiny increase
Hal> in speed.  But of course hashcash creation times are so variable,
Hal> even doing 100 coins the time varies by maybe 50%.  So it's really
Hal> hard to tell if it is helping at all.

Thanks for your tests.

It's not really surprising.  Both processes are doing similar things,
and are numeric-intensive, which apparently hyperthreading doesn't seem
to work well with.

Hal> I did a little research then and it seems that most hyperthreading
Hal> benchmarks show similar results of only a few percent increase at
Hal> best.  I have to say that this CPU technology is more hype than
Hal> hyper.

I try to avoid the hype. ;-)

I think it all depends on the type of application you're running.  If
both processes are numeric-intensive (or are doing the exact same
thing), I guess hyperthreading won't help, since you're still only using
one core.  If your processes are doing vastly different things, like in
a typical office app or game, hyperthreading is probably more of a
winner.  I don't think hashcash is, or ever will be, an application that
can take advantage of hyperthreading, since it just does a whole bunch
of integer calculations.

-- 
Hubert Chan <hubert@xxxxxxxxx> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
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