Microsoft and Intel to Spend $20 million on Parallel Computing Development

Microsoft and Intel work to create parallel computing to make computers work faster by dividing tasks over numerous microprocessors, rather than having one processor to perform one task at a time.

Two major companies will invest 20 million U.S. dollars during a five year period to promote the research on parallel computing at two research centers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of California, Berkeley in U.S.

The development of parallel computing was discussed for years and was considered to be a breakthrough in technology. Now, Intel and Microsoft want to make it a reality.

Parallel computing will result in big advances in software and make it possible for example to translate documents in real time in multiple languages. In parallel computing tasks are carried out simultaneously and is based on a principle that larger tasks can be divided into smaller tasks to be performed concurrently.

"Parallelism is the path forward to the unprecedented levels of performance that are needed ... to keep this growth going," said Andrew Chien, chief of Intel research.

Tony Hey, executive vice president of external research at Microsoft Research said that parallel computing will make radical changes in the way the software for supercomputers, server computers, laptops and handheld devices is developed.