Sun, for its part, is trying to optimize software to take advantage of its multicore and multithreaded processors. For example, Sun is preparing its MySQL open-source database software to perform faster by breaking up instances of the application over multiple cores, Fowler said.

"We're working on MySQL to make it scale to higher and higher thread and core counts," Fowler said.

Some recent studies have raised questions about whether a high number of cores will provide a jump in software performance. The Sandia National Laboratories, for example, noticed workload processing improve from two to eight cores, but actually decline as the number of cores expanded beyond that.

The reality is a little more complicated than that, Fowler said.

"You have got to be careful of those very broad-based statements because all software is very different, and even a workload on a database can be different.," he said. Some workloads perform "really well" on a higher number of cores, while others are better suited to four or eight cores, he said.