Chip Makers Turn to Multicore Processors

by David Geer Computer, May 2005 Computer performance has been driven largely by decreasing the size of chips while increasing the number of transistors they contain. In accordance with Moore's law, this has caused chip speeds to rise and prices to drop. This ongoing trend has driven much of the computing industry for years. However, transistors can't shrink forever. Even now, as transistor components grow thinner, chip manufacturers have struggled to cap power usage and heat generation, two critical problems. Even performance-enhancing approaches like running multiple instructions per thread have bottomed out. For these reasons, processor performance increases have begun slowing. In response, manufacturers are building chips with multiple cooler-running, more energy-efficient processing cores instead of one increasingly powerful core. Read the article