Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 1st Apr 2008 15:52 UTC, submitted by Dan Warne
Intel today revealed it can convert single threaded software to multithreaded mode without any code modification. The new 'speculative parallel threading' process monitors software and examines whether its processes can be run in parallel. If they can execute succesfully, the software can be recompiled to run as a multithreaded app. Intel says it has realised that programmers are going to need machine help to get software running as multithreaded. "We can't blame the programmers," an Intel spokesman said. "The industry has been complaining for 30 years about how difficult parallel programming is."
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Member since:
2007-08-06
It's not primarily about desktop machines, it's about servers. Sun is already selling relatively cheap 64 CPU-thread systems, and progress in CPU engineering has been moving in the "double the number of cores, not the clock speed" direction for several years already. In a few years servers will routinely have dozens of CPU cores (or virtual CPUs, as in hyperthreading), and that means the software needs to be ready.
Desktop machines will be following a couple of years behind on that curve, but the trend is coming there too.