To deal with the problem of power consumption and overheating the major central processing unit (CPU or processor) manufacturers started to produce power efficient processors with multiple cores. The core is the computing unit of the processor and in multi-core processors each core is independent and can access the same memory concurrently. Multi-core processors have brought parallel computing to desktop computers. Thus parallelization of serial programs has become a mainstream programming task. In 2012 quad-core processors became standard for desktop computers, while servers had 10+ core processors. By 2023 some processors had over hundred cores. Some designs having a mix of performance and efficiency cores (such as ARM's big.LITTLE design) due to thermal and design constraints.. From Moore's law it can be predicted that the number of cores per processor will double every 18–24 months.
To deal with the problem of power consumption and overheating the major central processing unit (CPU or processor) manufacturers started to produce power efficient processors with multiple cores. The core is the compu:ting unit of the processor and in multi-core processors each core is independent and can access the same memory concurrently. Multi-core processors have brought parallel computing to desktop computers. Thus parallelization of serial programs has become a mainstream programming task. In 2012 quad-core processors became standard for desktop computers, while servers had 10+ core proce!ssors. By 2023 some processors had over hundred cores. Some designs having a mix of performance and efficiency cores (such as ARM's big.LITTLE des,ign) due to thermal and design constraints.. From Moore's law it can be predicted that the number of cores per processor will double every !18–24 months.