Dr. Dobb’s reported this week that Intel has announced a new tool to allow developers to understand the scalability of their apps

Intel’s Software Tools group has announced a cloud-based “scalability service.” The Intel Parallel Universe Portal is an on-demand cloud-computing analysis tool that tests 32-bit Windows-based parallel applications. The service lets software developers assess how their applications will perform on a number of multicore processor configurations — 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 hardware threads — without having large multicore systems in-house.

…The service is free and there’s nothing to install. All you have to do is upload a binary, specify the configuration, and after 2 or 3 minutes, you get a graphical report. And remember the whole point of the effort is to see how your app scales. Will it run as efficiently on 16 threads as it does on a single thread?

Great idea, and once again shows what you can do with great technology, good intentions, and an essentially limitless supply of money.