Ksysguard and KinfoCenter - Number of cores incorrect

English Hardware
1

My HPDV7 laptop has an Intel i7-3610-QM processor, which the manufacturer lists as a Quad Core.

However, both Ksysguard (System Monitor) and KInfoCenter report 8 cores.

Interestingly,

~>lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                8
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-7
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    4
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 58
Model name:            Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3610QM CPU @ 2.30GHz
Stepping:              9
CPU MHz:               2415.000
BogoMIPS:              4589.71
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              6144K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-7

Anyone else seeing this?

Perhaps a side effect of TurboCore?

Not a problem, that I am aware of, more a “what is going on” question.

2

That’s caused by Hyperthreading.
See here:
http://www.richweb.com/cpu_info

3

Thanks for the reference, wolfi.
There is an interesting comment there, “In general Hyperthreading is considered older technology and is no longer supported in newer cpus.”
Core i7 older technology?
Anyway, I looked in bios, there is no way to turn Hyperthreading on/off.

So I’ll just live with it, and wonder why…

By comparison, my AMD APU in Desktop reports

~> lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                4
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-3
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    4
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             AuthenticAMD
CPU family:            18
Model:                 1
Model name:            AMD A8-3850 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics
Stepping:              0
CPU MHz:               800.000
BogoMIPS:              5800.31
Virtualization:        AMD-V
L1d cache:             64K
L1i cache:             64K
L2 cache:              1024K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3

Threads per Core =1 here, =2 for the i7.

I have not been buying intel for a while until I picked up the HP laptop, perhaps I am just not used to the Intel line.

4

I guess that comment is outdated. Intel introduced Hyperthreading in Pentium4 times, but the Core line did not include it until the Core i7.

From Wikipedia:

Intel implemented hyper-threading on an x86 architecture processor in 2002 with the Foster MP-based Xeon. It was also included on the 3.06 GHz Northwood-based Pentium 4 in the same year, and then remained as a feature in every Pentium 4 HT, Pentium 4 Extreme Edition and Pentium Extreme Edition processor since. Previous generations of Intel’s processors based on the Core microarchitecture do not have Hyper-Threading, because the Core microarchitecture is a descendant of the P6 microarchitecture used in iterations of Pentium since the Pentium Pro through the Pentium III and the Celeron (Covington, Mendocino, Coppermine and Tualatin-based) and the Pentium II Xeon and Pentium III Xeon models.

Intel released the Nehalem (Core i7) in November 2008 in which hyper-threading made a return. The first generation Nehalem contained four cores and effectively scaled eight threads. Since then, both two- and six-core models have been released, scaling four and twelve threads respectively.

AIUI, Hyperthreading does not bring the same performance boost as twice as much cores, but is cheaper to implement.

5

Interesting, thanks more

6

Yeah I had an old Pentium 4 on my last machine with hyperthreading, cool thing about that one is that I could run 64bit OS’s as it emulated a dual core/ 64bit system but always was told to keep it off.
In any case I would not worry about this, if it doesnt effect performance then I would just ignore the error.
Its like on the new laptop I got for my father, linux reports only 3 gigs of ram out of the 4 I know it has despite it running in 64bit.