[smileydub]

Can you please help me understand how Dual Core computers work?. e.g

1. Does the computer automatically assign which core will do what tasks, or does the user manually assigns them ?

2. When Windows XP runs with Parallels, must Windows applications must assigned to (say) core A, and then Apple applications to Core B?

3. When Boot camp is used to install Windows XP, are all the windows apps operated by one core processor, and then the Apple apps by the second core?

I hope these questions are not too tideous. Perhaps you can direct me to some already published notes.

Thanks for any info offered.

[ghporter]

1) Automatic-no user intervention at all. But if the APP is built to take advantage of the separate cores, it'll be much more efficient and quicker than if the scheduler has to decide.

2) Not an issue-the CPU's scheduler handles what each core does

3) Again, not an issue. The processor cores are separate, but inseparable. The chipset and how the app is written run everything.

Multiple processors are nothing new. The Core Duo is better because the cores share a memory cache and can communicate very efficiently without the OS having to be involved, as is the case with separate CPUs.

[mduell]

1. Yes, it's completely automatic. Other operating systems allow you to set processor affinities for given processes if you want, but I don't know if OSX does.

2. Only one core is available to Windows, and thus the apps inside it. As far as I know, all of the x86 virtualization software (except VMware's higher end server products) only emulate one core. Parallels has stated they plan to extend it to multiple cores in the future.

3. Parallels, Windows, and all the applications in Windows will run on one core. Other OSX applications may also be running on that core depending on system load.

[Simon]

Are you suggesting the entire Parallels app is running in one single thread?

[parsec_kadets]

3. Not sure why others aren't mentioning this, but with Boot Camp you're either running Windows, or you're running OS X. You can't run both at the same time. So when you're in Windows your Mac will behave the same as a dual core PC running Windows.

Operating systems will automatically assign "threads" to the cores. An application can have multiple threads, which means it can use both cores at the same time if it needs to. Also, the threads are not tied to a specific core in any way. So a single thread may jump from core to core, depending on what is going on in your system (i.e. it's not going to jump around if other threads don't need to use the core it's already on).