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Andrew：很多多核处理器的供应商都在帮助开发者转移到多核模型的过程中，表现得力不从心。做为一名著名的教授，你对于这种转变有什么看法？什么因素才能促使这种转变？如果有更好的工具可以解决问题么，比如在语言中加入对并发更好的本地支持，或者使用框架？或者还有其他的方案么？
Andrew: Vendors of multicore processors have expressed frustration at the difficulty of moving developers to this model. As a former professor, what thoughts do you have on this transition and how to make it happen? Is it a question of proper tools, such as better native support for concurrency in languages, or of execution frameworks? Or are there other solutions?

Donald：我不想回避你的问题。也许我个人的一些观点会为当前流行的多核架构趋势泼一盆冷水。在我看来，这种现象或多或少是由于硬件设计者已经无计可施了导致的，他们将Moore定律失效的责任推脱给软件开发者，而他们给我们的机器只是在某些指标上运行得更快了而已。如果多线程的想法被证明是失败的，我一点都不会感到惊讶，也许这比当年的Itanium还要糟糕——人们基本上无法开发出它所需要的编译器。
Donald: I don’t want to duck your question entirely. I might as well flame a bit about my personal unhappiness with the current trend toward multicore architecture. __To me, it looks more or less like the hardware designers have run out of ideas, and that they’re trying to pass the blame for the future demise of Moore’s Law to the software writers by giving us machines that work faster only on a few key benchmarks!__ I won’t be surprised at all if the whole multithreading idea turns out to be a flop, worse than the "Itanium" approach that was supposed to be so terrific—until it turned out that the wished-for compilers were basically impossible to write.

[Interview with Donald Knuth](http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856) Apr 25, 2008