What are the differences between core and thread?

[Harry P]

Hello, guys

Can any one explain me about what is core and thread in the processor and what are the differences between them? I could not distinguish these points when checking a VPS plan.

For example, 2 cores 4 threads, what does it mean?

Thanks
Harry.

 

[VirtuBox]

Hello Harry,
A core is a physical compute unit, and a thread is a logical compute unit. For example, with a Core i7 you have 4 physical cores but 8 threads. That mean, there are 2 logicial units per Core.
It provide better performances for any app which use multithreading.
But a VPS use only virtual cores (allocated with the virtualization software). So there is no cores/threads like with a dedicated server.

 

[vpsrus]

As Virtubox says the core is physical and threads are logical, the technology that allows multi-threading on a core it's called Hyper-thread, it was developed by Intel wherein one physical core you can process requests in 2 threads.
As an example to explain the difference let's thinking about a highway and car traffic:

On 2 cores and a single thread you have 2 threads, it means you have 2 lanes of car traffic where the requests can be processed if you request more it is like traffic jam the process will wait until the first one finishes.
On the same 2 cores but with hyper-thread technology you will have 4 threads or 4 lanes of car traffic it means that you can request double of the process without a traffic Jam.

So conclusion as Virtbox stated you will have better performance on a hyper-thread CPU.

 

[VictorVictories]

A processor is consist of cores that perform multiple tasks as per received instruction. A processor is also known as a microprocessor and is the basic computation unit of a computer.