I first asked this question at cstheory, but they suggested to ask my question here, so here it goes ...I'm working on my masters thesis and I need to have theoretical value of the (average) speed gain that a quadcore processor brings compared to a singlecore processor, when they both use the same frequency. So for example the speed gain of a 2 GHz singlecore vs. 2 Ghz quadcore.Somewhere on the internet I've read that a quadcore is 2.6 times faster than singlecore, but the author didn't mention any source so I cannot use that in my thesis.I've been trying to calculate some things myself, but didn't come to a conclusion. I tried like this:threads | quad core | single core | ratio --------|-----------|-------------|-------1       | 1         | 1           | 12       | 2         | 1/2         | 43       | 3         | 1/3         | 94       | 4         | 1/4         | 165       | 3+1/2     | 1/5         | 17.56       | 2+2(1/2)  | 1/5         | 157       | 1+3(1/2)  | 1/5         | 12.5...This table represents the timeslices available to execute a task (I've taken a fair 50/50 usage for each thread). For example when using a singlecore and a application uses 3 threads, each thread can work 1/3 of the time, while with a quadcore each thread can work 100% of the time, because 3 threads can be spread accross a separate core. After playing with some calculations in Excel, I could not come to any conclusion.I'm a bit stuck and need some fresh ideas on how to get a theoretical number that represents how much faster a quad core is (on average) compared to a single core. Maybe some of you know some empirical numbers with a good reference to the source? Anyway, all the help is welcome, because I'm a bit stuck and this is the last part I need to cover in my thesis.Thanks!
Theoretical speed gain of quad core vs. single core
computer architecture;performance