Multi-core processors: A new way forward and challenges

Continuous effort to achieve higher performance without driving up the power consumption and thermal effects has led the researchers to look for alternative architectures for microprocessors. Like the parallel processing which is extensively used in today´s all microprocessors, multi-core architecture which combines several independent microprocessor cores in a single die has currently become very popular in most high performance intergrated circuits. Although multi-core processor offers excellent instruction execution speed with reduced power consumption, optimizing performance of individual processors and then incorporating them by interconnection on a single chip is a non-trivial task. This paper investigates the leading challenges associated with current high performance multi-core processor in terms of interfacing different cores, design automation and verification, software adaptability.