Recently, a discussion emerged around the idea of limiting CPU usage to 50% to improve performance. This debate was sparked by the belief that such a limitation could lead to better efficiency and rewards. However, contrary to popular belief, limiting CPU usage to 50% does not always result in better performance or greater rewards.
The notion behind limiting your CPU to 50% is often to avoid using Hyper-Threading (HT).
What is Hyper-Threading? In simple terms, Hyper-Threading allows a single physical CPU core to act like two separate "virtual" cores. This enables the core to handle multiple threads (sets of instructions) simultaneously by sharing resources such as memory and cache. While this can improve performance in certain scenarios, it’s not universally beneficial.
In the context of Quilibrium, which does not utilize shared memory, enabling and using Hyper-Threading can actually degrade performance. This is because HT relies on efficient sharing of resources, which Quilibrium does not leverage effectively.
However, if you are renting a VPS (Virtual Private Server) or VDS (Virtual Dedicated Server), as a consumer, you cannot be certain whether your vCore (virtual core) is tied to a real physical core or a hyper-threaded core. Therefore, limiting your CPU usage to 50% in an attempt to avoid Hyper-Threading may not yield the desired performance benefits, and could be counterproductive.
Conversely, for bare metal or dedicated servers, it might be beneficial to disable Hyper-Threading in the BIOS to ensure you are only using real, non-hyper-threaded cores. This can help maximize performance by eliminating the potential inefficiencies associated with Hyper-Threading in environments that do not benefit from shared resources, such as Quilibrium.
