Why Apps Can't Run Faster [GENERAL CERTIFICATION NEWS]

By Ed Sperling

The problem may not be evident at two, four or even eight multicore computer processors. But when an application is written to take advantage of eight cores and the next iteration of that processor has 20 cores, the vast majority of applications will continue to take advantage of only eight cores.

Moreover, even if an application is rewritten to utilize all 20 cores, the performance gains will be lower than a decade ago when the clock speed was doubled on a single core processor. And that's a best-case scenario. A word processing application threaded for 20 cores will not run much faster than a version that uses one or two cores.

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