The computer industry is in the midst of a transition and the computers of tomorrow will be quite different than what we're currently used to. With the old standby of a "die-shrink and ramped-up clock speeds" no longer possible due to increased power dissipation issues, processor manufacturers have turned the focus onto other means of improving performance on each new emerging class of CPU. The current method du jour is to pack two CPU cores onto one physical processor silicon die. This technique allows for a smoother ride, a nice little performance spike, and as more software is written with SMP support, application performance will also increase easily.

While gamers are at the cutting edge of technology (eagerly snapping up the most expensive videocards, CPUs and memory) it's the business and workstation world that benefits the most from dual core processors.

In the workstation arena, dual processor or SMP systems are common, and much of the software written for dual processor systems is compatible (a patch here or there might be necessary) with dual core processors. After all, the difference between two physical and two logical processors is only slight from the software's perspective.

Processors like AMD's 64-bit Athlon64 X2 series - dual core processors which are 32/64-bit operating system compatible - are a prime example.

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The introduction of this series of CPUs by AMD has signaled a new shift in desktop computing that quickly saw rival Intel follow suit with its own class of dual core CPUs. However, major PC brands seem to be stuck in the past when it comes to selecting the processors for PC systems destined to find their way into endless corporate cubical farms. AMD is all but shut out of the game by Dell, Gateway and IBM.