A Fundamental Theorem of Multi-Core Processors

Multi-core processors take advantage of a fundamentalrelationship between power and frequency. By incorporatingmultiple cores, each core is able to run at a lower frequency,dividing among them the power normally given to a singlecore. The result is a big performance increase over a singlecoreprocessor. The following illustration—based on our labexperiments with commonly used workloads—illustratesthis key advantage.