Hi All,
Time to break in. I essentially tend to agree with Mike's view.
(1) Multiprocessing operating system. Popular OS's for years all support multiprocessing (don't know about MAC). Having a multiprocessing computer and an OS supporting it DOESN'T MEAN that your OS is going to distribute your load as you dream it will. In my experience IT DOES NOT. I abandoned since about 1999 my P3 XEON multiprocessing machines for this reason. I have been carefully watching hyperthreading: same story.
(2) Load balancing by virtue of the operating system is very effective in server machines. Why? Because you basically run mainly one and the same program: your OS. That's all. The OS itself is designed to distribute its load over many processors as required.
(3) Workstation environments are much different. Of course you run your OS but if you do any serious computing, the cpu load of the OS itself is minor. Given the enormous diversity of programs run by users, OS writers cannot really do much in making sure a given user with a given application mix will neatly load up a few processors: IT WILL NOT.
(4) Of course, some applications may have been specifically designed to exploit multiprocessors. This is sometimes the case for high end professional applications. In house designed software can be developed with processor load balancing in mind. This makes programming quite a bit more difficult.
(5) The fact that most of today's software makes use of threads doesn't mean that these threads will indeed be magically dispatched to an idle processor. MOST LIKELY THEY WILL NOT. You touch here upon the basic distinction between multiprogramming and multiprocessing. One doesn't imply the other.
(6) It is safe to say that anything proposed about this is going to turn out much different than what people dream about it. As is known for many, many years, the only way to tell is TEST: benchmark. I did a lot in the past and always came out much ahead by sticking to powerful single processors, except in server environments.
(7) Some things can be learned from large scale scientific multiprocessing based applications. These computational processes consist often of highly parallel evolving operations and software design fully takes advantage of this. This is hardly the case of a workstation loaded up with a garden variety of applications.
X2/Dual Core? It's basically the answer of cpu manufacturers having run into the wall imposed by physics itself. These days, they can only put two of the same under the hood to double power.
Can any change be expected in all this? I dunno. Let's wait for some benchmarking - still better, do your own and come back after you did. It's a new ball game altogether. You want more power? In truth, your favorite cpu manufacturer can't do the old trick anymore. You'll have to make it work for yourself.
nononsense
