The developer can write the code so that everything is performed in a single thread, each of the steps in performing the compression occurring in sequence. Take a simple example of file compression and decompression.

This allows the hard work in an app to be performed across many cores, each running in parallel. Unless you’re an octopus with four displays and the concentration to interact with several apps at the same time, the only way that you’ll see worthwhile benefit from more than a few cores is when your most significant apps run in parallel on many cores at once, using parallel computing. Last week, Apple announced its first M1 chip with 20 cores. Over the following fourteen years the number of cores has grown steadily until 2019 when Apple introduced the first Mac Pro with as many as 28 as an option. First, in 2000 the Power Mac G4 gained dual processors, then five years later, the Power Mac G5 brought the first 2-core processors. It has been over twenty years since our Macs started containing more than one processor core. As a result, processor developers have increasingly turned to more cores as the solution to the need for greater speed. One of the main limitations on the frequency of processors is that faster processors require more power, which in turn generates more heat, so requires more cooling.

There are two basic ways that computers can perform their tasks faster: the processors inside them can run faster by increasing their clock frequency, and there can be more processors working in parallel with one another.

What is parallel for macs