

Apple intros Mac Pro with 12 processing cores - helwr
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20011762-37.html

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zweben
I'm one of the few non-programmers here, and I figured this would be a good
place to ask: Right now, few applications are coded to utilize so many cores.
Is this simply a matter of programmers transitioning to coding for multi-core
computers, or are some types of software not good candidates for taking full
advantage of so many cores?

I have an 8-core Mac Pro, and I was hoping to see its performance improve over
time as software took better advantage of the hardware, but I don't see that
happening yet.

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angstrom
Both, not all tasks are equally parallelized. Some, like the graphics
rendering pipeline, data mining, search indexing, and others can reap the
benefits and already do. However, there are many tasks that don't parallelize
as easily and lead to the programmer waiting for one synchronous task after
another due to a dependency. Even if you did run the tasks in parallel the one
would need to block and wait until the other completed.

In some cases the programming languages are just ill suited to handle
performing concurrent operations free of side effects. Programs written in the
languages would have to be rewritten (not likely for many apps). Parallel
Studio, by Intel, attempts to make the task easier on programmers working in
c++/Windows to identify such cases. Still, others have proposed and attempted
to create a layer beneath the programming language that automatically detects
code that can be safely executed concurrently without side effects. There's
still no silver bullet that's suddenly going to give significant gains without
modifications to existing code at this point.

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iamcalledrob
There's no mention of this on the Apple homepage. I find that rather
interesting.

~~~
zweben
This is probably because it's not shipping yet. They are still selling the
older model in the store. It'll probably get a "Now Shipping" front page spot
when the time comes.

