Dual-Core Processors

Computer performance has been driven largely by decreasing the size of the chips while increasing the number of transistors they contain. In accordance with Moore’s law, this has caused chip speed to rise and prices to drop. However transistors can’t shrink forever. As components grow thinner, chip manufactures have struggled to cap power usage and heat generation. Even performances enhancing approaching like running multiple instructions per thread have bottomed out. In response manufactures are building chips with multiple cooler running, more energy-efficient processing cores instead of one increasingly powerful core. Multi-core processors don’t necessarily run as the fastest single core processor, but they improve the overall performance by handling more work in parallel. Dual-core processors represent a major evolution in computing technology. This important development is coming at a time when businesses and consumers are beginning to require the benefits offered by these processors due to exponential growth in digital data.