Multi-core use is growing rapidly as users expect a steady increase in the number of cores available in their computers, but firms generally don’t understand the implications for application porting and development.
“Multi-core processing has been around for decades in high-end computation on very large, sophisticated, and expensive computers,” said Peter Dzwig of Concertant. “Users designed applications specifically for massively parallel machines like Crays*. Now, within the last three or four years, Intel and AMD have brought multicore to commodity servers and even notebook computers. To make the best use of multi-core, developers will have to learn a new range of skills.”
That’s the conclusion from an annual multi-core survey run by Concertant LLP, a consultancy and training firm which specializes in multi-core computing.
