An article on the software issues involved in using multicore devices from PC World magazine.  Perhaps the most mainstream article on the subject yet:  The Trouble With Multicore Processors

Grant Martin of Tensilica discusses embedded multicore in the EE Times article Multicore systems-on-chip can handle embedded designs.  This approach to embedded system design offers many advantages, including higher performance, lower power, simplified software, simplified hardware and increased flexibility.

Some may argue with the premise of the EE Times article There’s nothing new about multicore mania but it is certainly true that many early programming languages, in particular Ada, contain support for various types of multiprocessing.  But modern multicore architectures permit very high bandwidth on-chip communication, which can provide higher performance and more flexibility than the loosely coupled communication models that underly most parallel programming models.  How this will be exploited by software is still one of the big open questions concerning the evolution of multicore devices.

German multicore company Plurality announces the design for its 256 core device:  Plurality Completes R&D of its HAL-256 Multicore Processor

Somehow I missed the announcement that Intel is buying game software developer Havok (Intel To Acquire Havok).  Quite an unusual move for a semiconductor manufacturer.  The new announcement that Intel is now buying another gaming software property, Offset Engine, indicates that it may be acquiring software expertise to assist in ints upcoming CPU + GPU project code named ‘Larabee’:  Why Intel bought Project Offset and the Offset Engine.

Another EE Times article about the crisis in multicore programming:  Multicore puts screws to parallel-programming models

Another EE Times article about AMD and multicore software:

AMD drives shift in computer software:  New stack needed to pave way for hetero multi-core CPUs

From the EE Times:  Wintel will fund parallel software lab at Berkeley  Industry seeks a model for next-gen multicore CPUs

Another good article from the it-director.com:  Threads are the Problem not the Solution  It covers some of the same territory as Edward Lee’s articles from Berkeley, but from less academic and more business oriented.

An article in EE Times from Synopsys discusses the use of simulation, in particular SystemC Transaction Level Models (TLM) for multicore software development: Fast virtual platforms open up multicore software development