Parallel | concurrent | simultaneously

Question

I understand that the cpu isn't actually processing stuff at the same time.
So does it just do it so fast that it seems like it's doing it together?

So how do threads, asynchronous and multiprocessing change the cpu performance?

Answer 1

With the technology we have today, each core of the CPU is able to process something. So it's a combination of being able to process multiple things at the same time, as well as the processors being quicker than they used to be. With threads (multi/hyperthreading), you're able to take a single core and divide up the tasks on it so that you essentially are able to do multiple things at the same time with a single core. When you compound that with multiple cores, you're only increasing its ability to do so and thus increase the performance overall.

Hope that helps. Once upon a time your statement was true and we weren't able to do that. Those days are long gone though.