The Free Lunch Is Over (computing)

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This article is about computer hardware limits and software concurrency. For the more general phrase, see TANSTAAFL. For the principle of conservation of computational performance, see No free lunch in search and optimization. For the group, see No Free Lunch (organization).

"The Free Lunch Is Over" is an article[1] from Herb Sutter stating that microprocessor serial processing speed is reaching a physical limit, which leads to two main consequences: 1) processor manufactures will focus on products that better support multithreading (such as multi-core processors), and 2) software developers will be forced to develop massively multithreaded programs as a way to better use such processors.

Despite these facts, information systems are still being developed in a more serial fashion. For a discussion of why this is still the case, a counter point of view[2] was published.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sutter, H. 2005. "The free lunch is over: A fundamental turn toward concurrency in software," Dr. Dobb's Journal, 30(3), http://www.gotw.ca/publications/concurrency-ddj.htm.
  2. ^ Wilcox, J. 2008. "Multiprocessing: How 'bout that free lunch?", http://politechnosis.kataire.com/2008/04/multiprocessing-how-bout-that-free.html