What is Hyper Threading (HT)?

What is Hyper-Threading (HT)? 

Hyper-Threading is a technology developed by intel that increases the performance of the CPU cores. 
In Hyper-Threading a single physical processor is shared as two logical processors and each logical processor has its own architecture state. and a single set of execution units are shared between logical processors.
It enables multiple threads which are sequences of instructions to be run by each core to make the CPU one more efficiently and by doing this the CPU can perform more tasks in the same amount of time. 
So in a nutshell you can run a lot of applications at the same time while maintaining the performance of your computer when you have a hyper-threaded CPU. in other words your computer is not going to slow down.

In the beginning, a CPU will have a single core.
A core is a unit that reads and executes instructions. 
Later on, manufacturers started to add additional cores to a CPU. 
So that the CPU can read and execute more instructions at a time which dramatically increased the performance of the CPU. 

For example, 
We have a dual-core CPU which basically means that it has two physical processing units on a single chip. 
Further, to increase the performance of the CPU and to make it faster even more intel introduced hyperthreading. 
If hyper-threading technology was added to the CPU, each physical core that's on the CPU the operating system will recognize each physical core as two virtual or logical cores.
Basically, hyper threading virtually doubles the number of cores that are on the CPU. 
So the dual-core processors will be recognized as having four cores through the lens of the operating system.
Now keep in mind that hyperthreading doesn't double the physical cores in the CPU. 
It only doubles them virtually or logically and since the operating system will recognize each physical core as two virtual cores. 
The operating system will schedule or share the workload between them. 
Each virtual core can be individually interrupted or directed to execute a specific instruction that is independent of the other virtual core. 
The main function of hyper-threading is to increase the number of independent instructions in the pipeline and by doing this it will eliminate any idle time on the CPU. 
Which makes a computer run faster and more efficiently.
It's also important to note that in order to take advantage of hyper-threading you have to run applications that take advantage of multi-threading technology. 
For example,
Heavy applications such as video editing and video encoding will take full advantage of a hyperthreaded CPU but for lighter applications such as loading a webpage, you're not going to see much of an advantage of having a hyperthreaded CPU.
Hyper-Threading was first introduced by intel in 2002 and debuted on the Intel Pentium for CPU and Xeon processors and is still used today.