Simultaneous multithreading allows sharing of process facilities to run two applications or two threads of the same application at the same time. Find out more about this concept.
Although an operating system gives the impression that it is concurrently executing a very large number of tasks, each processor in a symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) traditionally executes a single task's instruction stream at any moment in time. The QPRCMLTTSK system value controls whether to enable the individual SMP processors to concurrently execute multiple instruction streams. Each instruction stream belongs to separate tasks or threads. When enabled, each individual processor is concurrently executing multiple tasks at the same time. The effect of its use will likely increase the performance capacity of a system or improve the responsiveness of a multithreaded application. Running multiple instruction streams at the same time does not improve the performance of any given task. As is the case with any performance recommendations, results vary in different environments.
The way that multithreading is done depends on the hardware model, and therefore, the performance capacity gains will vary. IBM® eServer™ 5xx models support this approach through a concept called simultaneous multithreading (SMT). This approach, called hyperthreading on some Intel® processors, shares processor facilities to execute each task's instructions at the same time. Older processors use an approach called hardware multithreading (HMT). In the hardware multithreading approach, the hardware switches between the tasks on any long processing delay event, for example, a cache miss. Some models do not support any form of multithreading, which means the QPRCMLTTSK system value has no performance effect.
Because the QPRCMLTTSK system value enables the parallel use of shared processor resources, the performance gains depend highly on the application and the model. Refer to the iSeries™ Performance Capabilities Reference for guidelines about what performance gains might be expected through its use. In some cases, some applications are better served by disabling this system value.