OMP - more threads than number of processors?

Question

The default OpenMP directive is:

opm_get_num_threads gives the number of threads equivalent to processors / cores.

I have an 8-core machine, so it gives me 8 threads. This is maximum? Can I get more threads than 8 if I intentionally specify more than 8?

thanks

Answer 1

You can set as many threads as you want:

 int threads = 16; omp_set_num_threads(threads); 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/e16bady3%28v=vs.80%29

But be sure that you are aware of the disadvantages of using more threads than there are logical cores in the system.