In an endeavor similar to what Google and IBM are doing to spur future software development, AMD has announced today that they are joining the Eclipse Foundation. While the Eclipse Foundation is focused on open-source development in general, AMD's goal is a little more focused. They want to increase development of software that is optimized for multi-core processors:
AMD will add its rich expertise and history of collaborative innovation to the Eclipse community, helping to drive the standardization of an extensible development platform and application frameworks that can harness the power of x86 architectures and multi-core processing.
This is a good boost for Eclipse, and hopefully in the long run for all those who depend upon open source software and projects. As we inch a little closer to a wall in terms of clock speed potential, multi-core systems are only going to become more prevalent. Obviously it is in everyone's best interest, not just AMD's, to encourage development to go in this direction.