What is dual core?

In order to use dual-core technology to its best advantage, the operating system and the applications need to support thread-level parallelism--which basically means running multiple execution threads simultaneously. Microsoft Windows XP and more than 200 applications, such as Adobe Photoshop CS and Roxio VideoWave 7, are multithreaded. Most of today's multithreaded applications are of the content-creation ilk, which tend to perform many operations in parallel.

As dual-core technology becomes more prevalent, you can expect to see more multithreaded apps become commonplace--for example, 3D-intensive games can take advantage of dual-core technology by using more robust physics and AI engines for more realistic effects and gameplay. But since Windows XP itself is multithreaded, you don't necessarily have to be running multithreaded apps to see a performance gain. Windows is a multitasking environment, and as such, there are usually applications running in both the foreground, such as the browser you are using to read this, and the background, such as real-time virus scanning. A dual-core processor should execute the multiple threads of these applications more efficiently.

CNET Labs has already begun testing and benchmarking Yonah-fueled laptops from Dell, HP, Sony, and WidowPC. We look forward to bringing you our results and reviews during the next few weeks.