I just reread an article in Redmond Magazine recently that said that developers are reacting to hardware evolution instead of driving hardware innovations like they used to. I have also read that at one time hardware developers felt held back by software developers because their applications were not ready for the leaps in power. What I recently learned from my professor is that software developers did not yet understand how to upgrade their code to better utilize this new power, and still don't in a lot of ways. The hardware developers finally decided to continue innovating, with or without the software guys. The thinking was that someone, somewhere would have to make the software to work with the new hardware. The open-source community has been part of parallel programming initiatives since the beginning so there was no issues there. The biggest issue, was with Microsoft who exists in 90% of the worlds computers. They did and still do well on single threaded applications but, until Windows 7, struggled with efficient and effective multi-thread execution at the desktop. Microsoft's server software has been multi-threaded for some time now, and they have continued to improve on that as technology advances. What I see happening in the past few years at a hurried pace is developers coding in parallel languages for 64-bit multi-core architectures and creating ways to code for 128/256-bit many-core architectures, as already found in modern video cards, for the desktop. CPUs with 80 and 100 cores already exist, for servers, now developers need to catch up to bring this power to users.
I found an article online that talks about a company that released a 100-core processor to compete with Intel and AMD at the server level, here's some information on the technology and its intended use: http://www.tilera.com/products/processors/TILE-Gx_Family
What do you think is holding development back now? Is it just that developers need to catch up, or is it too little too late?
-Geek
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