我知道这个问题很老了，但事情从2009年开始就有了变化。

现在有两件事需要考虑:核心的数量，以及每个核心中可以运行的线程的数量。

With Intel processors, the number of threads is defined by the Hyperthreading which is just 2 (when available). But Hyperthreading cuts your execution time by two, even when not using 2 threads! (i.e. 1 pipeline shared between two processes -- this is good when you have more processes, not so good otherwise. More cores are definitively better!) Note that modern CPUs generally have more pipelines to divide the workload, so it's no really divided by two anymore. But Hyperthreading still shares a lot of the CPU units between the two threads (some call those logical CPUs).

在其他处理器上，您可能有2、4甚至8个线程。因此，如果你有8个内核，每个内核支持8个线程，你可以有64个进程并行运行，而不需要上下文切换。

“没有上下文切换”显然是不正确的，如果你运行的是一个标准的操作系统，它会对各种你无法控制的事情进行上下文切换。但这是主要的思想。一些操作系统允许你分配处理器，这样只有你的应用程序可以访问/使用处理器!

From my own experience, if you have a lot of I/O, multiple threads is good. If you have very heavy memory intensive work (read source 1, read source 2, fast computation, write) then having more threads doesn't help. Again, this depends on how much data you read/write simultaneously (i.e. if you use SSE 4.2 and read 256 bits values, that stops all threads in their step... in other words, 1 thread is probably a lot easier to implement and probably nearly as speedy if not actually faster. This will depend on your process & memory architecture, some advanced servers manage separate memory ranges for separate cores so separate threads will be faster assuming your data is properly filed... which is why, on some architectures, 4 processes will run faster than 1 process with 4 threads.)

一次4000个线程是相当高的。

答案是肯定的，也不是。如果您在每个线程中执行大量阻塞I/O，那么是的，您可以在每个逻辑核心中执行3或4个线程时显示显著的加速。

If you are not doing a lot of blocking things however, then the extra overhead with threading will just make it slower. So use a profiler and see where the bottlenecks are in each possibly parallel piece. If you are doing heavy computations, then more than 1 thread per CPU won't help. If you are doing a lot of memory transfer, it won't help either. If you are doing a lot of I/O though such as for disk access or internet access, then yes multiple threads will help up to a certain extent, or at the least make the application more responsive.

我同意@Gonzalo的回答。我有一个不做I/O的进程，下面是我的发现:

请注意，所有线程都工作在一个数组上，但范围不同(两个线程不访问相同的索引)，因此如果它们工作在不同的数组上，结果可能会有所不同。

这台1.86版本的机器是一台带有SSD的macbook air。另一台mac是一台iMac，硬盘正常(我想转速是7200转)。这台装有windows操作系统的机器还有一个7200转的硬盘。

在这个测试中，最佳的数量等于机器中的核数。

我知道这个问题很老了，但事情从2009年开始就有了变化。

现在有两件事需要考虑:核心的数量，以及每个核心中可以运行的线程的数量。

With Intel processors, the number of threads is defined by the Hyperthreading which is just 2 (when available). But Hyperthreading cuts your execution time by two, even when not using 2 threads! (i.e. 1 pipeline shared between two processes -- this is good when you have more processes, not so good otherwise. More cores are definitively better!) Note that modern CPUs generally have more pipelines to divide the workload, so it's no really divided by two anymore. But Hyperthreading still shares a lot of the CPU units between the two threads (some call those logical CPUs).

在其他处理器上，您可能有2、4甚至8个线程。因此，如果你有8个内核，每个内核支持8个线程，你可以有64个进程并行运行，而不需要上下文切换。

“没有上下文切换”显然是不正确的，如果你运行的是一个标准的操作系统，它会对各种你无法控制的事情进行上下文切换。但这是主要的思想。一些操作系统允许你分配处理器，这样只有你的应用程序可以访问/使用处理器!

From my own experience, if you have a lot of I/O, multiple threads is good. If you have very heavy memory intensive work (read source 1, read source 2, fast computation, write) then having more threads doesn't help. Again, this depends on how much data you read/write simultaneously (i.e. if you use SSE 4.2 and read 256 bits values, that stops all threads in their step... in other words, 1 thread is probably a lot easier to implement and probably nearly as speedy if not actually faster. This will depend on your process & memory architecture, some advanced servers manage separate memory ranges for separate cores so separate threads will be faster assuming your data is properly filed... which is why, on some architectures, 4 processes will run faster than 1 process with 4 threads.)

大量线程(“线程池”)vs每个核心一个线程的一个例子是在Linux或Windows中实现web服务器。

由于在Linux中套接字是轮询的，因此许多线程可能会增加其中一个线程在正确的时间轮询正确的套接字的可能性——但总体处理成本将非常高。

在Windows中，服务器将使用I/O完成端口(IOCPs)实现，这将使应用程序事件驱动:如果I/O完成，操作系统将启动一个备用线程来处理它。当处理完成时(通常是请求-响应对中的另一个I/O操作)，线程返回IOCP端口(队列)等待下一次完成。

如果没有I/O完成，就没有要做的处理，也没有启动线程。

事实上，微软建议在IOCP实现中每个核不超过一个线程。任何I/O都可以附加到IOCP机制。如果需要，应用程序也可以发布IOCs。

如果你的线程不做I/O，同步等，没有其他的运行，1个线程一个核可以让你获得最好的性能。然而，情况很可能并非如此。添加更多的线程通常会有所帮助，但在某种程度上，它们会导致性能下降。

Not long ago, I was doing performance testing on a 2 quad-core machine running an ASP.NET application on Mono under a pretty decent load. We played with the minimum and maximum number of threads and in the end we found out that for that particular application in that particular configuration the best throughput was somewhere between 36 and 40 threads. Anything outside those boundaries performed worse. Lesson learned? If I were you, I would test with different number of threads until you find the right number for your application.

有一件事是肯定的:4k线程将花费更长的时间。这有很多上下文转换。