Could SAS9.4 server take advantage of multiple hardware threads of a CPU-core ?

[BigSASFan]

I have a questions regarding how SAS9.4 server could take advantage of the multiple hardware threads of a CPU-core on hosting machine.

For server level hosting machines, for example, mid-range IBM Power servers or SUN SPARC servers (both machines are certified to run SAS9.4 server), each CPU core could have multiple hardware threads (for example, a SUN SPARC M8 CPU-core supports 8 hardware threads). On the contrary, for a hosting machine with Intel CPU, each core might only support just 2 hardware threads.

My question is: could SAS9.4 server (assuming running on AIX, Solaris, or Linux OS) takes advantage and fully utilize the multiple hardware threads of a CPU core (e.g., the 8 hardware threads of each SUN SPARC M8 CPU-core)?

Also, is there any SAS document mentions this topic ?

I appreciate your insights and time,

[sbxkoenk]

Look here :

Running SAS programs in parallel using SAS/CONNECT®
By Leonid Batkhan on SAS Users January 13, 2021
https://blogs.sas.com/content/sgf/2021/01/13/running-sas-programs-in-parallel-using-sas-connect/

Base SAS + SAS/CONNECT - A simple method to generate load on any number of licensed cores
Posted 04-08-2021 05:46 AM | by SimonWilliams (4276 views)
https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Communities-Library/Base-SAS-SAS-CONNECT-A-simple-method-to-gener...

SAS Global Forum 2013 | Paper 401-2013
High-Performance Statistical Modeling
Robert A. Cohen and Robert N. Rodriguez, SAS Institute Inc.
https://support.sas.com/resources/papers/proceedings13/401-2013.pdf

Good luck,

Koen

[BigSASFan]

Thanks sbxkoenk for the links.

[SASKiwi]

I'm curious to know the context of your question. With SAS 9.4, and probably most SAS products, use of CPU resources doesn't happen in isolation to all other resources, such as IO and memory. Any time a SAS log reports CPU time is greater than real time, processing is happening on multiple CPUs or cores simultaneously and SAS is not constrained by other resources. Any time you see CPU time reported as less than real time the SAS job is most likely IO constrained since it is the slowest resource. Except for CPU intensive operations like calculations, IO has the biggest influence on the performance of SAS jobs.   

[BigSASFan]

Thanks for the reply SASKiwi. My question is more about how SAS could utilize the multiple hardware threads inside a CPU core.
For example, when SAS multi-threading execution a job, could SAS take advantage the multiple hardware-threads inside a core, or it could only run on multiple cores (meaning that SAS take each core as a single thread, even though one CPU core supports multiple hardware-threads) ?

[SASKiwi]

@BigSASFan - I suspect this type of question would be better answered by a software architect expert at SAS who knows the internal workings of the product.