WMI ProcessorType

Question

The CPU alias of WMIC returns a value called ProcessorType, MSDN states that there are 6 possible values:

1 (0x1) Other
2 (0x2) Unknown
3 (0x3) Central Processor
4 (0x4) Math Processor
5 (0x5) DSP Processor
6 (0x6) Video Processor

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394373(v=vs.85).aspx

Is it possible for any type of processor other than 3 to serve as the main (or only) processor? I am writing a hardware hash function and I don't want to include specialized processors unless a general purpose processor is missing.

Answer 1

Sounds to me you are asking for a warranty. You cannot get one, this information is not supplied by WMI or the operating system. Like much of the WMI data, this comes from a driver. The chipset driver, invariably supplied by the chipset manufacturer, companies like Intel, AMD, NVidia. They may be tweaked by the system integrator. That is however very rare, the cut-throat pricing in that business just don't allow for goodies. Or the support they'll need to provide when their non-standard query results make programs bomb.

So 99.99% of the time you'll just get a single result. Just 3 for the CPU.

Which makes the property completely useless, it doesn't contribute sufficient random data to make the hardware hash unique enough. So don't include it, problem solved.

Answer 2

You could use the GetNativeSystemInfo (link) API function to get some information about the main processor.

void WINAPI GetNativeSystemInfo(
  _Out_  LPSYSTEM_INFO lpSystemInfo
);

It returns a SYSTEM_INFO structure (link)

typedef struct _SYSTEM_INFO {
  union {
    DWORD  dwOemId;
    struct {
      WORD wProcessorArchitecture;
      WORD wReserved;
    };
  };
  DWORD     dwPageSize;
  LPVOID    lpMinimumApplicationAddress;
  LPVOID    lpMaximumApplicationAddress;
  DWORD_PTR dwActiveProcessorMask;
  DWORD     dwNumberOfProcessors;
  DWORD     dwProcessorType;
  DWORD     dwAllocationGranularity;
  WORD      wProcessorLevel;
  WORD      wProcessorRevision;
} SYSTEM_INFO;

This structure contains the following information in the member dwProcessorType:

PROCESSOR_INTEL_386 (386)
PROCESSOR_INTEL_486 (486)
PROCESSOR_INTEL_PENTIUM (586)
PROCESSOR_INTEL_IA64 (2200)
PROCESSOR_AMD_X8664 (8664)
PROCESSOR_ARM (Reserved)

the member wProcessorLevel shows the vendor-defined processor level, and wProcessorRevision shows the vendor-defined revision number of the processor.