[kenster07]

Adding to my original post, every process is managed by Erlang's VM. Whereas in many languages, concurrency constructs are mapped to OS threads, Erlang has virtual threads that it manages for you. If the VM detects a multicore processor, it will know how to -automatically- map its virtual threads to take advantage of them.

Also, the actor-based style of programming tends to model real-world interactions more cleanly than OO code, leading to potentially clearer and more maintainable code.