Multicore Diversity: A Software Developer's Nightmare [abstract] (PDF)
David A. Penry
ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review (OSR), April 2009.

Commodity microprocessors with tens to hundreds of processor cores will require the widespread deployment of parallel programs. This deployment will be hindered by the architectural and environmental diversity introduced by multicore processors. To overcome diversity, the operating system must change its interactions with the program runtime and parallel runtime systems must be developed that can automatically adapt programs to the architecture and usage environment.