How should I report on processor utilization for machines running Intel Hyper-threading (HT) technology?
Hyper-threading (HT) is the brand name for the technology Intel uses in many of its Xeon 32-bit processors that enables one physical processor core to execute two instruction streams (or threads) concurrently. On an HT machine, when HT is enabled, each physical processor currently presents two “logical” CPU interfaces to the operating system so that two program threads can be dispatched at a time. The best way to report on processor utilization for an HT machine is to calculate the average utilization of the logical processors associated with the same physical processor core. Figuring out whether or not HT is beneficial or detrimental on a specific workload is difficult today unless you can do an apples-to-apples comparison between an HT machine and a non-HT machine running the exact same workload. On an HT machine, all the processor level resource usage measurements such as % Processor Time represent utilization of a logical processor. Some authorities recommend averaging the processo
