[jws]

…from 33-MHz to 3-GHz, a thousand-fold increase…

There had to be a better way to write that. I suppose more work per clock cycle and increased number of cores contributes the other x10 of raw performance. But then the author goes on to say they are stuck, which isn't true of performance, only clock rate. In any event, putting an "up is down" in your sentence should generally be avoided.

Edit: The >>>proscribed<<< method for resolving this is a “lock”, where… Sigh.

The article covers a lot of ground lightly. It talks about the new Haswell transactional memory instructions, the way Linux shards network counters, and a way to make Linux not use a core so you can schedule a process on it that will never be preempted.

[shawkinaw]

I think he just screwed up the math.