A many-core microprocessor or many-core processor is a microprocessor that is comprised of a large number of processor cores with the goal of achieving higher degree of explicit parallelism. The cores need not be identical nor necessarily fully-featured. Many-core processors often focus on optimizing specific aspects such as power or throughput (i.e. optimized for specific types of algorithms or tasks) at the expense of other characteristics (e.g. serial code performance).