I'm in school learning about things like multiprocessing and multithreading right now actually. Heliocon is closest to the truth.
Definition of a thread
Quote:
4. Computer Science
a. A portion of a program that can run independently of and concurrently with other portions of the program.
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Threads are parts of the main process that typically have a much smaller workload than the main process. In single processor systems, programs still benefit from being multi-threaded for various reasons. However as Heliocon said, they are still processed in a serial fashion. On a multi-core system you can actually run these threads simultaneously on the other cores.
Since the Clod team has stated it's multi-threaded to run on multiple cores I'll believe them (maybe there is a bug currently, I don't know why the cpu usage is only showing on 1). What functions can be run on the extra cores is the main point. If only simpler functions can be run on them you'll see only slight gains from multi-core.
I've just really started coding and I can already see that getting the timing of your code and its threads to all match up so you have a smooth experience must be a huge pain. If some functions are always waiting on others you'll just grind to a halt.
If you guys are willing to check out the thread article on wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(computer_science)
you might get a headache but you'll see this is not a simple thing.