Discovering Multi-Core: Extending the Benefits of Moore's Law

Overview

Intel dual- and multi-core chips are ushering in a new era of computer architecture, embracing a scale-out approach to enhance performance and enable more-efficient simultaneous processing of multiple tasks. Multi-core chips do more work per clock cycle, and thus can be designed to operate at lower frequencies than their single-core counterparts. Since power consumption goes up proportionally with frequency, multi core architecture gives engineers the means to address the problem of runaway power and cooling requirements. All this makes for significantly improved user experiences in both home and business environments, enabling Intel to extend Moore's Law well into the future.