Why a memory model is necessary
In 1965, Gordon Moore observed that the number of transistors in dense integrated circuits double every year. Later, in 1975, this was adjusted to doubling every 2 years. Because of these advancements, it quickly became possible to squeeze lots of components into a tiny chip, enabling the building of faster processors.
Modern processors use many advanced techniques, such as caching, branch prediction, and pipelining, to utilize the circuitry on a CPU to its maximum potential. However, in the 2000s, hardware engineers started to hit the limit of what could be optimized on a single chip. As a result, they created chips containing multiple cores. Nowadays, most performance considerations are about how fast a single core can execute instructions, as well as how many cores can run those instructions simultaneously.
The compiler technology did not stand still while these improvements were happening. Modern compilers can aggressively optimize programs...
