* * * * *
                                        
              Software wise, we're still in the mid-1980s it seems
                                        
> Intel first disclosed it had built a prototype 80-core processor [1] during
> last fall's Intel Developer Forum, when CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Paul
> Otellini promised to deliver the chip within five years. The company's
> researchers have several hurdles to overcome before PC (Personal Computer)s
> and servers come with 80-core processors—such as how to connect the chip to
> memory and how to teach software developers to write programs for it—but
> the research chip is an important step, Rattner said.
> 

“Intel shows off 80-core processor [2]”

CPU (Central Processing Unit)s capped out a few years ago [3], leaving
companies like Intel [4] and AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) [5] with little
recourse but to start stuffing boxes with multiple CPUs. Dual and qual-core
systems are common now, even for home computers; how long until the monster
above hits the streets?

And it's not just the high end processors that are getting the multicore
treatment—even embedded processors are going multicore [6] (link via
flutterby [7]).

Progress keeps marching on, but software development hasn't, sadly. Very few
languages have parallelizing features, much less automatic parallelization,
and multi-threaded programming is still very problematic, with very few
languages having it built in.

So, where do we go from here? Well, for a start, some radical ideas about
programming languages for one thing … 

[1] http://news.com.com/Intel+pledges+80+cores+in+five+years/2100-1006_3-
[2] http://news.com.com/2100-1006_3-6158181.html
[3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2005/02/18.1
[4] http://www.intel.com/
[5] http://www.amd.com/
[6] http://www.parallax.com/propeller/
[7] http://www.flutterby.com/archives/comments/10117.html

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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