Multicore CPUs face slow road in comms

The culprit: complex, fragmented technology

Rick Merritt, EETimes
(03/20/2009 2:06 PM EDT)

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The transition to multicore processors in communications and networking systems is expected to be a slow one due to complex and fragmented nature of the underlying technology, predicted a technology analyst.

Processors with four or more cores will probably represent little more than 10 percent of the communications systems market in 2012, according to Linley Gwennap, principal analyst with The Linley Group (Mountain View, Calif.). He was speaking at a panel at this week's Multicore Association Expo here.

By contrast the use of single-core processors is still on the rise in embedded systems, peaking at about half the market over the period. The PowerQuicc, a unique heterogeneous architecture from Freescale Semiconductor that represented another large swath of the market, is on the decline as the company transitions to a simpler dual-core architecture, he said.

Gwennap projected that such dual-core designs could command as much as 20 percent of the market by 2012.

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