By Agam Shah
Writing applications for devices like tablets and smartphones could become more challenging as CPUs and hardware accelerators are added to mobile chips, experts agreed at a processor conference on Monday.

Chip makers are adding CPUs and specialized hardware accelerators to mobile chips as an energy-efficient way to boost application performance on tablets and smartphones. Most mobile devices today come with one CPU core on a chip, but tablets and smartphones with dual- and triple-core chips could hit shelves as early as next year.

That means that applications must be rewritten to take advantage of the new hardware, said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at Linley Group, during the Linley Tech Processor conference in San Jose, California.

A lot of work would be needed in software to extract better performance out of multicore chips, which could be a challenge, Gwennap said.

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