My latest Javaworld article details the issues around multi-core computing from a Java perspective with some initial discussion on the theory behind parallel computing (Amdahl, Gustafson et al.).. From the article "Hardware is really just software crystallized early," says Alan C. Kay in his paper "The Early History of Smalltalk" (ACM, 1993). This quote really explains the inspiration for this article. Software developers have always been at the mercy of hardware manufacturers, although we've had a pretty easy ride of it since the inception of the computing industry itself. From then until now, increasing speeds of every single component that goes into the standard Von Neumann architecture have given our software literally free increases in performance.
No longer."
This is a good article to read in order to understand how all the major vendors are in the middle of a concerted move to multi-core computing, how that affects the software you design and develop and Java support for multi-core computing.
Check it out here
