Hyperthreading / SMT
Simultaneous Multithreading — one physical CPU core presenting itself as two logical threads, sharing execution units to keep them busy when one thread stalls.
A core with SMT (AMD's term) or Hyperthreading (Intel's term) exposes two hardware threads. When one thread waits on memory or a cache miss, the second uses the idle execution units.
Real gain
SMT yields roughly 15–30% additional throughput on heavily threaded workloads (compilation, rendering, video encoding). It does NOT double performance — the underlying execution resources are shared.
When it hurts
A few latency-sensitive workloads (some games, certain audio plugins) prefer SMT disabled so threads don't fight for cache. Intel's hybrid designs sidestep this by dropping SMT on P-cores (Core Ultra 200) and skipping it entirely on E-cores.
Reading specs
"8 cores / 16 threads" means 8 physical cores with SMT. "8 cores / 8 threads" means no SMT. For sustained multi-threaded work, more cores beat more threads — a 12-core / 12-thread chip often outperforms an 8-core / 16-thread chip on rendering.