Intel Corporation has announced a global effort to prepare university students for a new paradigm of software development as Intel transitions its processors from single-processor engines to ones that will have multiple cores and threads. This evolution will transform software design and require entirely new thinking and innovation in order to leverage this kind of processing power.

As part of its higher education program, Intel is providing 45 of the world's top universities with expertise, funding, development tools, educational materials, on-site training and sustained collaboration with Intel to incorporate multi-core and multi-threading concepts into their computer science curricula.

By the end of this year, Intel expects more than 75 percent of its mainstream server, desktop and laptop PC processors to ship as dual-core processors; with four-, eight- and many-cores on the horizon.

"To usher in a new generation of computing technology and bring creative new products to market, it's crucial to educate tomorrow's software developers to architect, develop and debug the next generation of software for modern, multi-core platforms," said Renee James, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel's Software and Solutions Group. "The full potential of multi-core based systems to deliver great performance and expanded usages is unleashed when software is designed to take advantage of the full capabilities of the machine. Working with the world's best universities, Intel is creating the future for performance computing."

Universities participating in the worldwide effort include Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Michigan and University of Washington, as well as leading academic institutions across Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Russia, Taiwan and several European countries. The first courses will be offered during the fall term this year and Intel expects hundreds more universities to participate in 2007 and beyond.

"Intel's support in multi-core education is critical for two reasons," said Karsten Schwan, professor of College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology. "First, getting early access to advanced technology and new equipment is something that always excites students. Second, companies like Intel have a perspective that looks beyond research to see the broader potential for technology."

The curriculum provides an introduction to Intel multi-core architecture and teaches computer science students how to achieve maximum performance of their programs on threaded, multi-core and multi-processor systems using Intel compilers and threading tools. It also covers the importance of parallelism, threading concepts, threading methodology and programming with threads (Windows, OpenMP, PThreads).

Included in the endeavor are faculty training sessions delivered by Intel Software College multi-threading experts from around the world. Intel also provides course materials, laptops powered by dual-core processors for instructor use in the classroom, as well as licenses for Intel Software Development Products and access to forums and technical support.