Multi-core revolution: real or hype-ity hype hype?

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Michael Suess contributes to an online discussion about whether multi-core processors are creating a software “crisis” or just one more milestone along the way.

Mark Nelson does not believe in the hype about multi-cores. And he is right with several of his arguments. The world is not going to end if we cannot write our applications to allow for concurrency, that’s for sure. Since I am working on parallel machines all day, it is easy to become a little disconnected with the real world and think everybody has gotten the message and welcomes our new parallel programming overlords. Some of Marks arguments are a little shaky, though, as I hope to show you in this article. Is Mark right? I suspect not, but only time will tell.