SPEC CPU2006 Platform Settings for Intel-based systems

Firmware / BIOS / Microcode Settings

Hardware Prefetcher:

This BIOS option allows the enabling/disabling of a processor mechanism to prefetch data into the cache according to a pattern-recognition algorithm. This default setting is "Enabled".

In some cases, setting this option to Disabled may improve performance. Users should only disable this option after performing application benchmarking to verify improved performance in their environment.

Adjacent Cache Line Prefetch:

This BIOS option allows the enabling/disabling of a processor mechanism to fetch the adjacent cache line within a 128-byte sector that contains the data needed due to a cache line miss. This default setting is "Enabled".

In some cases, setting this option to Disabled may improve performance. Users should only disable this option after performing application benchmarking to verify improved performance in their environment.

Hyper-Threading:

Disabling Intel's Hyper-Threading Technology reduces the number of threads per core to 1. The default is Enabled; in this case each core provides additional resources for executing up to 2 threads in parallel.