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G. He
Asked: 2012-04-01 08:01:41 +0800 CST

Any way for ubuntu to use more than one core of i7 cpu on my Asus laptop?

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Newly installed ubuntu 11.10 on a new Asus U46E laptop. /proc/cpuinfo correctly identified the cpu but shows only one core:

processor   : 0
vendor_id   : GenuineIntel
cpu family  : 6
model       : 42
model name  : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2640M CPU @ 2.80GHz
stepping    : 7
cpu MHz     : 800.000
cache size  : 4096 KB
physical id : 0
siblings    : 1
core id     : 0
cpu cores   : 1
apicid      : 0
initial apicid  : 0
fpu     : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level : 13
wp      : yes
flags       : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc up arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt aes xsave avx lahf_lm ida arat epb xsaveopt pln pts dts tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid
bogomips    : 5587.63
clflush size    : 64
cache_alignment : 64
address sizes   : 36 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
power management:

I search here and found the answer to one post suggesting remove boot parameter 'nolapic'. However, on my particular laptop, ubuntu won't boot without this nolapic parameter. Is there anyway for ubuntu correly utility the full cpu power?

asus multi-core

2 Answers

  1. Open a terminal and run sudo apt-get install htop

    Then run htop. It will show you all your cores and there usage. If it does then don't worry about it.

    You can also use the standard top utility, press 1 and it will display all cores.

    If it still shows one check your BIOS in case there is a settings disabling other cores.

    Any Linux distro needs no config for multi cores, and I would seriously consider the entire install as suspect if this is really the case.

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  2. nolapic essentially disables SMP so you're only going to see a single processor.

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