Software and the Concurrency Revolution

  • Authors:
  • Herb Sutter;James Larus

  • Affiliations:
  • Microsoft;Microsoft

  • Venue:
  • Queue - Multiprocessors
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Leveraging the full power of multicore processors demands newtools and new thinking from the software industry.Concurrency has long been touted as the "next big thing" and "theway of the future," but for the past 30 years, mainstream softwaredevelopment has been able to ignore it. Our parallel future hasfinally arrived: new machines will be parallel machines, and thiswill require major changes in the way we develop software. Theintroductory article in this issue ("The Future of Microprocessors"by Kunle Olukotun and Lance Hammond) describes the hardwareimperatives behind this shift in computer architecture fromuniprocessors to multicore processors, also known as CMPs (chipmultiprocessors). (For related analysis, see "The Free Lunch IsOver: A Fundamental Turn Toward Concurrency in Software.")