Intel on the eve of its Intel Developer Forum conference in San Francisco has unveiled a Terra-Scale Computer research programme that aims to prepare the world for multi-core processors.

The programme aims to address problems posed by systems that are powered by processors with tens and hundreds of processor cores.

Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner at a press briefing on Monday touted multi-core processors as a way to increase computing power.

"We see multi-core really going to give us an opportunity to get back on the traditional growth lines that we began to shift away from given the difficulty of delivering more instruction level parallelism as well as the difficulty of increasing the processor speeds," Rattner said.

"Multi-core is a very effective way to get more performance while using less energy."

Dual core processors are readily available today and Intel later this week is expected to unveil the first quad-core chip. But Rattner cautioned that semiconductor manufacturers will run into problems when they go beyond eight processor cores because of the overhead required to manage those cores.

The initiative spans a over 80 research projects, ranging from research on how to build software that optimally uses multi-core processors to hardware research on how to increase the bandwidth to access memory.

"It made much more sense for Intel to get really serious about this now, then when the technology becomes available to build these processors. Then we have the tech available to answer those questions," Rattner said.