

Is Multicore Hardware for General-Purpose Parallel Processing Broken? - yvdriess
http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/4/173217-is-multicore-hardware-for-general-purpose-parallel-processing-broken/fulltext

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yvdriess
As a researcher involved in parallel processing and parallel computing, this
article has really crystallised some of my thoughts about the field.

I sometimes hesitate to even call our current multi- and manycores parallel
processors. The actual superscalar architecture is actually very parallel, you
just have direct control over any of the parallel features baked into the
silicon.

You have market forces limiting the exploration of vastly different
architectures. Our multicore processors are the result of small incremental
changes to the efficient sequential microprocessor design that is the von
Neumann architecture. Even if a designer bakes a parallel processing feature,
such as the 'micro-dataflow' out-of-order execution cores; this still needs to
fit into the high-level processor architecture. In other words, the processor
still needs to pretend it is a sequential one.

