topic hyperthreading in bladesystem c? in BladeSystem - General

hyperthreading in bladesystem c?

Peter A. Berger Jr. — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:49:36 GMT

is there a way to turn on hyperthreading in a bladesystem c? I have the BL460c blades with the Intel Xeon 5160 Dual Core 3.00Ghz CPU's.

I am running VMware ESX on these blades and ESX says that hyperthreading is "enabled(not active)*" and that "*" means, "In order fo ESX Server to activate Hyper-Threading, the host BIOS must also enable this feature. Make sure that the BIOS is configured as expected the next time you reboot this host".

I can't find any BIOS settings that say "hyperthreading" I do see an Intel Virtualization setting under advanced settings in the BIOS. I've enabled this and rebooted, but Hyperthreading is still not active in ESX.

I can't imagine a brand new dual-core CPU doesn't have HT options?

Any tips/tricks? I don't see anything in the BL460c user's guide either.
thanks...

Re: hyperthreading in bladesystem c?

Heironimus — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 16:40:41 GMT

The Xeon 5160 does not support hyperthreading. Some piece of VMware is misreporting the chip as supporting HTT when it doesn't.

Re: hyperthreading in bladesystem c?

Peter A. Berger Jr. — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:08:37 GMT

Thanks for the 411 about the BL460c not having HT built-in. I did some research on Intel Virtualization and found this:
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/263/1

I guess either way, enabling the Intel Virtualization in the BL460c BIOS should help our our ESX farm.