A number of times I've mentioned the rise of parallel processing and multi-core as well as the effect on development and the kinds of solutions that are consumed. I was talking with some folks at TI the other day about the projections of multi-core processors on the market and the attached chart was discussed.

If you place this information on a logarithmic scale it definitely appears to be exponential in nature and we all know examples of the shift in thinking that exponential growth causes - essentially a shift to a view to one of abundance and not scarcity. In addition to the core growth there is also the growth in the number of threads a processor can run simultaneously to pump more computing through the cores.

Windows 7 supports up to 256 processors, and Linux supports a large number as well, but it is the applications that actually add value, not the operating system. What can be written that takes advantage of these advances may start to shift what is actually written.