Intel has integrated hyper-threading technology into its fastest CPUs for over two decades. This technique allows multiple threads to run on a single CPU core. AMD also utilizes a similar technology called “simultaneous multi-threading” on its processors.
In the future, Intel’s upcoming Lunar Lake CPUs will no longer feature the “HT” text on the label, indicating the discontinuation of hyper-threading support. This means that hyper-threading will be disabled on all cores of Lunar Lake CPUs, including both low-power and high-performance cores.
Intel’s decision to discontinue hyper-threading in the new Lunar Lake CPU family is based on the improved performance of the high-performance cores (P-Cores), which are 14% faster than those of the previous generation Meteor Lake CPUs, even without the use of hyper-threading multi-threading feature.
The focus of the Lunar Lake CPU family is on enhancing performance while maintaining a lightweight and energy-efficient design. Therefore, enabling hyper-threading would result in increased power consumption, which is not aligned to optimize single-threaded performance to improve overall performance per watt. Consequently, the elimination of the physical components required for hyper-threading aligns to achieve high performance without compromising energy efficiency and portability.
Even so, hyper-threading may still exist for future desktop CPUs, especially when performing large tasks in servers and data centers, and even on small machines. Gaming laptops are inherently more concerned with power than energy efficiency.
