How to Inspect CPU Model, Cores, and Hyper‑Threading on Linux

Viewing CPU Model and Frequency

Use /proc/cpuinfo together with grep to display the CPU model name and its operating frequencies.

# CPU model
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "model name" | uniq
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2640 v4 @ 2.40GHz

# CPU frequency
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "cpu MHz" | uniq
cpu MHz         : 1547.537
cpu MHz         : 1250.590
cpu MHz         : 2183.637

Counting Physical CPUs

Count distinct physical id entries to determine how many physical CPU packages are installed.

# Physical CPU count
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "physical id" | sort | uniq | wc -l
2

Finding Cores per Physical CPU

Read the cpu cores field to learn how many cores each physical CPU provides.

# CPU cores per socket
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "cpu cores" | uniq
cpu cores        : 10

Logical CPU Count

Logical CPUs are reported by the processor entries; the total equals physical CPUs multiplied by cores per CPU, doubled when hyper‑threading is active.

# Logical CPU count
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "processor" | wc -l
40

Detecting Hyper‑Threading

Compare the cpu cores and siblings values; if siblings is greater, hyper‑threading (HT) is enabled.

# HT detection
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep -e "cpu cores" -e "siblings" | sort | uniq
cpu cores        : 10
siblings         : 20

By combining these commands, users can quickly assess whether their machine’s CPU performance is limited by core count, frequency, or the presence of hyper‑threading, which is essential when selecting hardware for machine‑learning workloads.