The Move to Mutlticore

Oct 16, 2008 - By Roger Smith

 

Quad-core processors are rapidly becoming standard equipment, not just for servers but for mobile and desktop systems too. Following the launch of its first mobile quad-core processors based on 45nm technology earlier this year, Intel began shipping second-generation quad-core server processors that deliver 25% higher performance than the company's first-gen quad-core servers. And Intel, IBM, AMD, Sun, and others are just getting started: All these companies are testing or have on their drawing boards massively multicore processors with as many as hundreds of processor cores per chip. These will bring the capabilities of supercomputers to everyday devices, to a level bordering on Buck Rogers science fiction-think real-time data mining across teraflops of data; full-body medical scans; artificial intelligence for smarter cars and appliances; and virtual reality for a wide range of modeling, visualization, and physics simulations.

Getting from here to there ain't gonna be easy, though. It will definitely take more than shelling out big bucks for new hardware to get Buck Rogers-level results. First off, there's a good chance IT departments standardizing on new quad-core technology will find that a big chunk of that expensive hardware is sitting idle because their software wasn't built to take advantage of multiple cores.

Don't want to be left out of the race to super-high performance? Then get your apps ready now.