In the last couple of years, we have heard more and more about mult-core processors. AMD, Intel, IBM and Sun are the more visible ones. You can get a more comprehensive list of vendors here. However, the software tools for multi-core development has not really caught up with the hardware development. Intel is trying to fix this by funding training in several universities around the world.
“To usher in a new generation of computing technology and bring creative new products to market, it’s crucial to educate tomorrow’s software developers to architect, develop and debug the next generation of software for modern, multi-core platforms,” said Renee James, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel’s Software and Solutions Group. “The full potential of multi-core based systems to deliver great performance and expanded usages is unleashed when software is designed to take advantage of the full capabilities of the machine. Working with the world’s best universities, Intel is creating the future for performance computing.”
Here is the announcement from Intel.
Gaming systems like XBox360 from Microsoft with its three core Power PC and Sony PS3 with the IBM Cell processor seem to be some of the initial adopters of multi-core processors.