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MikeSuede

Dabbler
Joined
Aug 23, 2013
Messages
36
Hopefully, this is an easy question. I've just upgraded my processors to ones that have six cores and twelve threads, so I have a total of twenty four threads. My dashboard is only showing twelve in total. Is there a limit on the number of threads that can be shown, or is one of my processors defective?
Any help would be appreciated...

HP Z600
TrueNAS Core-13.0-U4
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5675 @ 3.06 GHz x 2
Adamanta 49106MB DDR3 ECC 1333MHz Registered
Western Digital Red Plus 6TB x 6 (RAID-Z2)
Three Colour Dogfish Portable SSD 128GB x 2 (Mirrored)
 

rvassar

Guru
Joined
May 2, 2018
Messages
972
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU X5675 @ 3.06 GHz x 2

That's a Nehalem derived Westmere-EP Xeon. That generation of Xeon received no Spectre/Meltdown microcode fixes. From a security standpoint, the only safe option with those is to turn off hyper-threading. You can check your BIOS settings, it's possible HP made the choice for you. You may be able to turn it back on and see all 24 threads, but you need to understand the security implications of doing so. Keep in mind, hyper-threading in this generation only nets maybe 30% more performance. So your 24 threads only results in something like 15.6 cores worth of throughput, vs 12 without the security hassle.
 

MikeSuede

Dabbler
Joined
Aug 23, 2013
Messages
36
Thanks rvassar, I had completely forgotten about the Spectre/Meltdown situation. This is good news for me, because I'd rather here that the hyper-threading was purposely deactivated, then it actually being a defective processor. As far as possibly turning it back on, I agree with you. The performance increase could never balance out the possible security repercussions. Thanks again for your help.
 

rvassar

Guru
Joined
May 2, 2018
Messages
972
Thanks rvassar, I had completely forgotten about the Spectre/Meltdown situation. This is good news for me, because I'd rather here that the hyper-threading was purposely deactivated, then it actually being a defective processor. As far as possibly turning it back on, I agree with you. The performance increase could never balance out the possible security repercussions. Thanks again for your help.

You still need to confirm it is deactivated. Otherwise you may actually have a 6 core / 12 thread CPU with a security issue, and a dead second socket. Get a positive confirmation. :wink:
 

MikeSuede

Dabbler
Joined
Aug 23, 2013
Messages
36
You still need to confirm it is deactivated. Otherwise you may actually have a 6 core / 12 thread CPU with a security issue, and a dead second socket. Get a positive confirmation. :wink:
DEACTIVATED!!! Whew, that was a close one. Aren't there rules in the forums about scaring people... LOL...
 
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