Idle question about multi-core processors

[Matthew Dillon]

:> In any case, it looks to me like the mass-market may be supporting SMP
:> mobo's much sooner than I suspected.  And, I suspect that DragonFly may
:> provide much better performance on SMP hardware than many other OS's.
:
:I thought dual-core was SMP, was that wrong of me?
:
:--
:Erik Wikström
    
    It is SMP, definitely.  If one were to ask the question... how many
    cpu's is enough?  The answer is probably around four for any general 
    purpose computer.

    The biggest advantage a GPU has is its ability to process work in 
    parallel, either with parallel processing elements or with pipelined
    elements.  Because of this a GPU can do far more work then a CPU
    within the bounds of its capabilities.

    GPU makers have recently started trying to incorporate general purpose
    computing elements into GPUs, but I think this effort is going to be
    fairly short lived as consumer computers start to get more cores.  My
    guess is that GPUs will evolve better GPU<->CPU ABIs instead and most
    of the supervisory workload will shift back to the CPUs.  Pretty soon
    game makers will be able to *rely* on consumer machines having 2 or more
    cores in them.  There won't be any more single-core consumer machines
    two years from now.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon at backplane.com>