Multi-Core Slow Down [GENERAL CERTIFICATION NEWS]

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By Dan Woods

Multi-core processors may slow many applications down, not speed them up.

The widespread adoption of multi-core hardware is in many cases actually slowing down computing. A typical scenario: A company has a data-intensive software application and wants to make this software run as fast as possible. When its single-core machine reaches end of life, the company purchases multi-core hardware. To everyone's surprise, the application starts to run slower.

For technical support staff, the first question to ask when someone calls with a performance problem is, Have you done a hardware upgrade? Often, when the application is switched back to single-core hardware, the problem disappears.

How can this be? Don't more cores mean more computing power? Doesn't more computing power mean software that runs faster? The simple answer is no. Unless the software was written specifically for the multi-core paradigm, multi-core hardware may be a waste of money for increasing performance.

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