If you want to understand modern multicore hardware, it is a good idea to run CPU-Z — the legendary freeware that gathers information on microprocessors, mainboard, memory, and graphics. What kind of questions:
While developing software optimized for parallelism and multicore, you need answers to questions such as:
* Does the microprocessor support SSE 4.1?
* Does it support SSE 4.2?
* Does it offer virtualization extensions?
* How many physical and logical cores does it offer?
* Does it offer a Level 3 cache?
* How many Level 2 caches does it offer?
* I need information about the QPI (short for QuickPath Interconnect) link. Which is the speed offered by the QPI link?
CPU-Z 1.53 provides this information and answers to the aforementioned questions with a simple freeware application. The new version is compatible with both 64-bits and 32-bits modern Windows versions, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
