While the evolution of semiconductor technology has resulted in ever increasing transistor densities, power considerations appear to be limiting our ability to continue increasing clock frequencies at the same pace as in the past. In addition, other key parameters have not kept up with clock frequency. For example, we find ourselves spending more and more resources to address memory latency with limited results.

Finally, increasing design complexity impacts designer productivity and ultimately compromises our ability to keep up with Moore's law. Multicore microprocessor chips appear to provide a temporary reprieve against these limiting factors as along as applications inherently exhibit thread level parallelism and software can be restructured or designed to take advantage of it.

In this talk, we will review the technology trends, explore the motivation behind the recent focus on multicore microprocessor chips, and discuss the key factors that allow such designs to alleviate power and performance constraints. Finally, we will discuss how these trends may impact the evolution of microprocessor design in the long run and point to the critical challenges in this direction.