Parallel processing – why here, why now? For a long time parallel processing was an esoteric graduate?level topic. Suddenly, it became mainstream. Explain why this has happened.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In order for there to be a paradigm shift in computer hardware several things are required. There has to be a need for the change, it must bring tangible benefits, the technology must be available to make the change, and it must have an economic advantage.
Multicore processing has arrived at a time when it is possible to implement it economically. We can easily put over a billion transistors on a chip. It is not difficult to create several processors on a single chip. The question is, “Why should we do it?” Would it not be better to create larger and faster processors with more resources? One of the most important reasons for adopting multicore technology is that increasing the clock frequency of processors
appears to be difficult above 4GHz. Power dissipation is proportional to the square of the square of clock frequency; that is, doubling the clock rate quadruples the power dissipation. Moreover, a lot of computing does not need very large register sizes because 128?bit integers or 128?bit floating?point values are not necessary. That is, there is no significant demand for processors with large (wide) registers. There is, however, a demand for
increased performance. Multicore architectures allow a program to be partitioned between individual processors to increase performance at relatively little additional cost.