The Computers application displays information about physical processors and core-based processors.
Manufacturers and software vendors define processors and cores in different ways. Software vendors also use different methods for calculating processor capacity for license purposes. Some vendors simply count machines, others count processors, and yet others count cores. IBM counts cores as the basic measure of capacity.
On the Computer tab, the Computers application displays the total number of processors on a computer. On the Processor tab, you can view details about the physical processor and the core-based processors on the computer. Details include information about processor type, manufacturer, speed, the total number of cores on the processor, the total number of active cores on the processor, and whether or not the processor is 64-bit enabled.
In the Computers application, a physical processor is a single chip that can execute computer programming instructions. A processor can contain one or more cores. A core is a processing unit that executes computer programming instructions and is contained within a physical processor.