The Multi-core Migration
"By 2008 single-core servers will be virtually unavailable," said David Linthicum, an industry thought leader and partner at ZapThink. "It's imperative that companies realize how important multi-core technology is and how valuable it's going to be in the very near future. When utilized properly, multi-core can save companies a lot of time and money and can significantly improve application performance."

Many business applications are written as single-threaded programs, handling only one task at a time. With multi-core hardware, many of these applications hit the wall and are not able to take advantage of the technology -- in fact, they may even run slower due to reduced clock speeds in multi-core central processing units (CPUs). Existing technologies such as application servers help for some business applications, but many will need to be rewritten to support concurrent processing, to enable them to handle multiple tasks in a way that leverages multi-core hardware. Rewriting these applications can be time consuming, risky and extremely costly. The other alternative is to utilize tools that abstract the complexity of multi-threading away, like the ones available from Rogue Wave.

As more single-threaded applications encounter problems and as enterprises adopt multi-core technology -- even more so in late 2007 and into 2008 -- organizations will be faced with the difficult task of how to leverage it.

When utilized properly, multi-core hardware can create a more flexible and scaleable environment while consuming less power. However, one of the biggest obstacles that companies face is the shift from single-core to multi-core CPUs. Within the next year or so, the number of single-core CPUs will drop, which is why companies need to be able to leverage multi-core architectures and do so quickly.

C++ Taps SOA Innovations
Many organizations have adopted SOA development models to deliver flexible and agile application components, but frequently have traded performance and scalability in order to achieve these benefits. However, recent developments, including advancements in the specifications Service Component Architecture (SCA), and Service Data Objects (SDO), are enabling C++ applications to enjoy all of the benefits of agility and flexibility of an SOA without sacrificing high performance and other benefits that C++ provides.

The SCA standard significantly improves the ability to integrate C++ applications into SOA architectures that need to support different technologies by offering a repeatable development model, eliminating the time, cost and risk involved in constantly rewriting code. Rogue Wave has helped guide these standards, particularly related to C++.

Rogue Wave's HydraSCA is the first commercially available run-time that supports the SCA specification, enabling a repeatable model for service enablement in high-performance environments. HydraSCA supports SCA components implemented in C++, Java, and BPEL. Rogue Wave also offers the most complete platform support across the IT spectrum allowing applications to be incorporated into SOA, legacy, and other environments.

And while many perceive C++ as a legacy language, C++ came from a basis of innovation which continues to expand in the standards and open source communities. The C++ language is undergoing a significant enhancement in the C++0X version of the standard, which includes several major new features. In addition, C++ projects are the second most active projects on both Apache and SourceForge. The Apache "stdcxx" project, a cross-platform C++ Standard Library, is largely based on code donated by Rogue Wave, and ships with Rogue Wave SourcePro C++.