Not sure but afaik pd 3.0 still only makes use of one cpu-core? If yes, are there any plans to take advantage of dual, quad cores pretty soon? Any statements from parallels i missed?
Not true, my friend. Please search the forums. Parallels makes full use of every core you have, just as any multithreaded Mac app does (and that's all Parallels really is). It *exposes* only one virtual CPU to the guest OS, but that has nothing to do with how OS X schedules threads among its physical CPUs.
MBX, Are you probably visiting WWDC? If yes, don't miss a technical session from Parallels in one of the nearby hotels. A new capabilities are to be shown there. And virtual SMP option is one of them.
Are you saying that if a Windows application has two threads running, each thread may run in a different core of my iMac?
A single VM currently runs in a single core, unlike Fusion where you can choose to give the VM access to two cores. I think mmischke is saying that, since Parallels itself is a multi-threaded app, you can run more than one VM simultaneously and use one core for each. Also the Parallels software itself may use a separate core from the VM(s) for its admin tasks, though this appears to be a very light load as far as I can tell.
No. That would require Parallels to expose multiple virtual cores to the guest VM, which it currently does not do. VMWare fusion currently provides this capability, and it is a promised feature for a future Parallels release. Parallels itself, however, takes advantage of multiple cores. Also, multiple VMs running simultaneously would take advantage of this as well. Looking at my currently running Ubuntu guest, the Parallels process has 19 active threads.