Sodan et al. present an interesting analysis of the benefits of using multithreaded and multicore processors.

They provide a deep analysis of the state of the art hardware offerings that encompass a variety of combinations of these two technical solutions to improve the processing speed of computing systems. The analysis also takes into account approaches for cache memory, resource sharing, interconnections on chip, fault tolerance, and reducing power consumption. Moreover, it identifies challenges related to software that exploits multithreading and multicore processors.

The authors raise a series of concerns about the efficient use of hardware, and point to a need for a shift in software design. Hardware and software designers can find in this paper many interesting details of the state of the art. Furthermore, the paper can be used in a parallel computing class, as a well-written overview of software designers’ problems in exploiting the current hardware options.