Intel and Microsoft have awarded University of California, Berkeley and University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign researchers $20 million over five years to design a new generation of computing systems, focusing on breakthroughs in mobile computing and parallel computing software.

The industry is in a crisis because advanced parallel computing software has failed to emerge as quickly as parallel computing hardware. The most advanced consumer-oriented microprocessors have up to eight processors on a chip, but the industry is moving toward chips with 100 or more.