Everyone is familiar with how Intel, AMD and other chipmakers churn out faster and faster processors. But in the past few years the design of these chips has changed. Instead of making chips faster by making their components smaller and running them at higher speeds, makers have started building multiple processing engines, or “cores”, onto each chip. Each core can run at a lower speed, which requires less energy and produces less heat, and the overall number-crunching power of the chip continues to increase. But this change requires programmers to write code that can split the processing tasks efficiently between the cores. Such “parallel programming” is a classic problem in computer science, but not enough programmers have mastered the necessary techniques. Even so, the chipmakers have no intention of slowing down. Dual-core and four-core chips are already available, and Intel plans to launch six-core chips later this year. Chips with even more cores will follow in 2009.