HT
"Nehalem builds on the Core architecture with a native quad-core design; extra, shared L3 cache; and HyperThreading technology to allow each of the four cores to appear as two virtual cores to the host operating system.
While HT doesn't double the performance of a processor, it nonetheless should ensure that Nehalem outperforms a four-core Core 2 at the same clock speed."
Look, fire up your memory cells, OK? HT was useful if your code could meet certain specific requirements qua issuing a load/store or integer operation in concert with an float operation, IIRC. HT did not allow you to run two threads of arbitrary instructions simultaneously.
If you took the time to construct your software to take advantage of HT then HT was fine. Most software was not built that way and did not especially benefit from HT. What HT mostly did was give the punters 2 CPU graphs in Windows Task Manager.
So... now Intel rolls out the HT hype again... and somehow there is a fresh (or maybe not so fresh) crop of hacks to suck it up like The Truth. I suppose if Intel started spouting off about a new CPU technology called MMX then you lot would stand up and salute?
Not too impressive, bud.