Overview
SMT is the most advanced form of hardware multi-threading. It allows a single physical core to issue instructions from multiple threads in the same clock cycle. This helps fill 'bubbles' in the pipeline where execution units would otherwise be idle.
Implementation
- Intel: Branded as Hyper-threading.
- AMD: Simply called SMT (introduced with the Zen architecture).
Benefit
Improves overall system throughput by 15-30% in multi-threaded workloads without requiring a significant increase in die area.