Multi-Core Processor

A multi-core processor is a single CPU chip that contains two or more independent processing units, called cores. Each core can run its own instructions, so the processor can work on several tasks at the same time.

Dual-core chips have two cores, quad-core four, octa-core eight, and desktop and server chips can have dozens. Many cores also support simultaneous multithreading (Intel's Hyper-Threading), letting each core run two threads, which is why a processor may be listed as "8 cores, 16 threads". Software only benefits from extra cores if it splits its work into parallel threads or processes.