Re:No hard info (Score 1)

You get this sort of notions out of the hardware guys (anyone remember the Intel 432?). There is a long history of announcements from hardware organizations that leave software folks puzzled. Just because someone has a good grasp of how to design a CPU chip does not mean they have any clue about software.

Putting multiple CPUs on the same die is not a bad idea, but all the hardware (including the CPUs) will be controlled by one manager. The manager could be Linux, could be Windows, could be a virtualization layer like Xen. If you are going to run multiple operating systems on the same machine, the software is going to require the same sort of virtualization as on an ordinary single-CPU system.

About the only (minor) advantage is when more than one operating system is trying to be active concurrently. With multiple CPUs you can keep latency short without playing troublesome scheduling games in the virtualization layer. When one of the guest operating systems goes CPU-bound, you have a simpler time keeping response times with the other guest operating systems predictable.

Note that this works out the same either the CPUs are on the chip or separate chips.