Now that HP executives have stopped scrabbling through journalists' dustbins and Carly Fiorina has gone, the firm has returned to being the boring old firm that was guaranteed to lull even died-in-the-wool insomniacs to sleep, perchance to dream.

And so we see that HP has today started a programme aimed at helping people see the cost benefits of using multicore tech in HPC (high performance computing) applications.

A Winston Prather, general manager of HPC at er HPQ, explains the programme thus: "We're entering a phase where exploiting the power of multicore processors is critical for customers to accelerate the innovation and discovery that is directly tied to their business outcomes." Whatever that means.

What it seems to mean is that Accelrys, AMD, Intel, the Karlsruhe Institute of Tech and Total View Technology will work together to speed up apps for the multicores we're all going to have to endure, sorry enjoy, very soon.

HP will offer, by the end of this year, compilers, debuggers and maths libraries which will work on various CPUs, system architectures, OSes and their connections. HP will package these up, and offer technical support to optimise software firms' apps for multicore computers.

There you have it. Or rather will have it. µ