On Fri, 6 Feb 2004, Levi Bard wrote:
> What are some general thoughts about dual processors vs single in a
> workstation?
If you're running a heavily multithreaded desktop environment, SMP would
likely win out as to interactive response, provided the speed difference
between the SMP and UP systems isn't too vast. At a certain point having
one really fast CPU will beat out having multiple threads executing
simultaneously, but more slowly. Where that point lies would have to be
determined through a practical comparison I suppose.
The other situation where having multiple CPUs is nice, is the case where
you have a lot of device interrupts to field and process. This is
probably a non-issue for a workstation, but servers with lots of disk and
network devices tend to have a high interrupt load that bogs down a single
CPU.
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