Poll: Many Core PCs Expected Very Soon

By Kevin Farnham (107 posts) on September 30, 2007 at 8:06 pm

The results of the latest ThreadingBuildingBlocks.org poll clearly state that the people who chose to vote believe that low-end PCs will have many processing cores five years from now (in 2012). Here are the final results of the (unscientific) poll, which ran from September 13 through September 30:

How many processing cores will a typical new low-end (under $1000) computer have in 2012?

  • 16 cores - 55.1% (227 votes)
  • 8 cores - 26.2% (108 votes)
  • 4 cores - 14.6% (60 votes)
  • 2 cores - 4.1% (17 votes)

Undoubtedly, some voters must expect that low-end PCs will have 32 or more cores in 5 years. My own guess would have been 8 cores. But clearly, a strong majority of voters believes the typical PC purchased for home or basic office use five years from now will have at least 8 processors. So, will those processors just be sitting there idly, as people run a succession of single-thread software applications? Or, will applications change, such that they take advantage of all the processing cores that are likely to be available at an economical price in coming years?

This is a major reason for all the attention major companies are suddenly devoting to methods for developing multithreaded applications -- for example, TBB, new languages (Erlang), transactional memory in Haskell, OpenMP, along with traditional threads.

Considering the first 3 polls

It's interesting to think about implications of the results of the first three TBB.org polls.

So, the view is that there will be lots of processing cores on almost every computer before long; parallel programming is necessary when computers have many processing cores; and developers have mixed ideas on how we're going to address this situation.

Well, I think Threading Building Blocks is a great option, because I think the way all those processors/cores can be effectively utilized is by bringing data analysis and algorithms that were previously available only on high-powered workstations and in corporate or university or government research labs, to the average person's PC.

I'd be quite pleased if I could move my hands across the space in front of me and control a giant graphical display by clicking on scenes and waving my arms to move them, bring the one I wanted into main focus, etc., all with very quick refresh, as Tom Cruise did in the movie "Minority Report". I want that! I doubt that I'm alone.

Meanwhile, I don't think the single-core processor laptop I'm using to write this post (even though it's quite powerful, with hyperthreading and all) could support that application, with any kind of reasonable response...

New poll: Your TBB open source project participation

So, if we're going to solve this problem, we need development tools that facilitate the creation of multithreaded software applications. Threading Building Blocks is ideal for multithreading of the types of algorithm and image processing libraries that would be needed to make technologies such as those in Minority Report viable. This will require developers who want to apply technologies like TBB to libraries and applications, and developers who want to enhance the capabilities of tools like TBB.

So, our new poll asks:

To what degree do you intend to participate in the TBB Open Source Project?

  • TBB user only
  • TBB user and occasional contributor to the code base
  • I plan to actively contribute to future TBB development

The poll will be available for the next several weeks. Please register your intentions, so the TBB open source project's effort can be tailored to meet your needs.

Kevin Farnham
O'Reilly Media
TBB Open Source Community

Categories: Open Source, Parallel Prog. & Multi-Core, Threading Building Blocks

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