Why does the i7 processor report 8 cores?

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 4:35 AM, Bill Stanley <bstanle at wowway.com> wrote:
> I have an i7-860 processor in my computer.  Linux (and Windows) report it to
> have 8 cores available.  I checked on the specs of the chip and the specs
> say that it has 4 cores and 8 threads.  It seems that the OS is counting the
> treads as cores.  It really doesn't matter much but can somebody out there
> explain the discrepancy?

You are misunderstanding what "threads" means. The CPU supports
hyperthreading; each CPU core appears as 2 to the OS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthreading


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