Intel has patented a technology it calls 'Software Defined Supercore' (SDC) that enables software to fuse the capabilities of multiple cores to assemble a virtual ultra-wide 'supercore' capable of improving single-thread performance, provided that it has enough parallel work. If the technology works as it is designed to, then Intel's future CPUs could offer faster single-thread performance in select applications that can use SDC. For now, this is just a patent which may or may not become a reality.
Intel's Software Defined Supercore (SDC) technologies combine two or more physical CPU cores to cooperate as a single high-performance virtual core by dividing a single thread's instructions into separate blocks and executing them in parallel. Each core runs a distinct portion of the program, while specialized synchronization and data-transfer instructions ensure that the original program order is preserved, maximizing instructions per clock (IPC) with minimal overhead. This approach is designed to improve single-thread performance without increasing clock speeds or building wide, monolithic cores, which can increase power consumption and/or transistor budgets.
