[fpc-devel] Parallel Computing

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Michael Schnell said:
> > If the machine has a unified cache for both cores like a core duo 
> > there is indeed little chance for improvement by MT.
> 
> Sounds like a reasonable explanation. So a this kind of CPU Chip is more 
> or less a hoax ?

No. But one must be very careful to say 

new app performance = old app performance * cores

it doesn't work that way. Keep in mind that multicores were NOT developed
for the desktop but for the heavier servers that used multiple processors
(heavier database, web and fileservers). Multicore pretty much started out
as that typical setup integrated cost efficiently, nothing more.

And servers work on several connections/workloads at once, often with not
THAT great datasets.