To get the full benefit from multiple cores, developers need to use parallel programming techniques. a difficult discipline to master and hasn't been used much, outside of specialized scientific programs such as climate simulators.

Perhaps a better way to deal with multiple cores is to rethink the way operating systems handle these processors, Probert said. "Really, the question is, not how do we do parallel, but what do we do with all these transistors?"

The current architecture of operating systems is based on a number of different abstractions, he explained.

In the early days of computing, one program was run on a single CPU. When we wanted multiple programs to run on a single processor, the CPU time was sliced up into processes, giving each application the illusion that it was running on a dedicated CPU.

The idea of the process was an abstraction, and wouldn't be the last one. Once the OS started juggling multiple programs, it needed a protected space, free from user and program interference. Thus was born the kernel mode, which is separate from the space in which the programs were run, the user mode. In effect, kernel mode and user mode abstracted the CPU into two CPUs, Probert said.