elvis wrote:MrPopo wrote:Amdahl's law always applies; there is going to be something seriel that sets a hard limit on how much extra threads/processes can help you.
Over the course of an entire system, yes, there are always serial problems (otherwise you could theoretically finish a game the instant you start it).
But as above, you need to understand what Barrelfish and similar projects are attempting to do. Today's highly-serial problems are highly-serial because of the systems they sit on top of. When you start looking at paradigms like multi-kernel OSes, a lot of your once-serial problems disappear.
No, it won't fix all serial problems (see sentence 1), but don't think for a moment the confinements of today's software will apply in 5 years.
At least speaking from my own experience there are a lot of seriel problems you can't get rid of. Communication between two programs through service calls. User input is another HUGE one. Database locking is a third.