Cpu cores

Due to limitation of size vs. voltage on a CPU die, the trend with computer cpu makers is to put several dies on one chip. They call each CPU on the chip a core.

Multi-cores pose a problem to UNIX. UNIX has time-sharing among processes not cpu's. Some UNIX like operating systems don't work well with a Big Giant lock and there is wastage in multi-cores when they run these Operating Systems.

IBM recently announced creating cores that are interfaced with lasers thus allowing CPU cores to be interfaced even when they are farther apart than a electric passage would allow. This allows 100 core CPU's in the near future.

A perfect UNIX machine has a single core that is extremely fast and doesn't care about size. One mind boggles whether light photonics could be used instead of electricity creating the ultimate single processor machine.

Light seems to be the future of computing, until then multi-cores.