Software-Hardware Evolution and birth of Multicore Processors

TL;DR

This paper reviews the evolution of computer hardware and software, emphasizing the natural shift to multicore processors, and proposes a mathematical model to predict industry trends, highlighting the importance of software parallelism for future growth.

Contribution

It introduces a mathematical model representing HW-SW industry evolution and emphasizes the role of software in exploiting multicore heterogeneity for future advancements.

Findings

HW-SW industry evolution can be modeled mathematically.

Future industry growth depends on software exploiting parallelism.

Multicore processors are a natural evolution in hardware development.

Abstract

This paper presents a brief journey to the evolution of computer hardware and software, and underlines that shift to multicore technology is natual part of the evolution, and highlights the various laws governing the advancement of computer industry. Looking to these, it appears that the HW-SW industry trend can be represented by a mathematical model, for which future developments are predictable. Finally, the paper establishes that future of computer industry lies in more thrust in software to exploit parallelism available in software to utilize the heterogeneity in multicore processors.