Community discussions

MikroTik App
 
User avatar
gogotha
newbie
Topic Author
Posts: 30
Joined: Mon May 21, 2018 1:16 am
Location: Tyler

CHR Hyper-Threading

Mon Feb 03, 2020 5:44 pm

I have seen in a few places that it is recommended turning off Hyper-threading. Is this a performance issue or to protect from the ZombieLoad or other "side Channel" attacks?
 
User avatar
StubArea51
Trainer
Trainer
Posts: 1739
Joined: Fri Aug 10, 2012 6:46 am
Location: stubarea51.net
Contact:

Re: CHR Hyper-Threading  [SOLVED]

Mon Feb 03, 2020 6:08 pm

It's a performance issue. Hyperthreading is helpful for certain types of applications, but not for virtualized routing.

There is a good explanation by @TomjNorthIdaho in the linked thread


viewtopic.php?t=138549

Why disable hyper-threading ?

Hyper-Threading is a CPU trick to make a CPU core appear and function as if it were two CPU cores.
Some teckie info on Hyper-Threading - - - What is actually happening when Hyper-Threading is enabled is this:

- There is a software configured SMI interrupt (System Management Interrupt) that
A) Stops the CPU
B) POPs the stack (It copies the contents of CPU registers to a temporary memory location).
C) It then PUSHes the stack (It copies the contents of a different temporary memory location into the CPU registers)
D) It then allows the CPU to resume running.
E) After a few clock cycles, another SMI event occurs and this time the SMI process POPs and PUSHes the stacks then resumes running the original CPU contents. This process constantly repeats which to make it appear as if a CPU core is is two CPU cores.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 17 guests