If you build it, will they buy it? Processors will be multicore It’s the only way the chip companies know how to use all those transistors! (pesky Moore’s law) But, does the average computer user need it? Probably not – the average user probably already has way too much compute power! But, nobody has ever looked smart predicting that computers are as powerful as they need to be…

Hetero vs. Homogeneous The easy path to Multicore is simply tile some old cores you have sitting around Old being the operative word Intel says – “Don’t worry, if you’re burning too much power, you can just shut off most of the cores.” Heterogeneous makes more sense! Only turn things on when you need them When does Multicore become System on Chip? Already the m.o. for embedded stuff

Pick your apps carefully! Hmmm… How about hardware for Ray Tracing? Loads of completely independent threads Read-only database Write-only output to frame buffer Woo Hoo! Tiling these processors might actually make sense Beware the memory, pin, power, wire, etc. issues! Just because it’s embarrassing doesn’t mean it’s easy!

How about Asynchrony? I’m a member of a strange religion - the Asynchronous Systems cult With lots of (heterogeneous?) cores on the same chip, how will they deal with communication, coordination, cooperation, contention, consumption, chronology? How about asynchronous protocols? Hmmm… It’s so crazy, it just might work!