Since dual core processors are so easy to find and relatively inexpensive nowadays, will unRAID be able to take advantage of these multiple cores to increase the write speed?

 

It seems logical that if the parity calculation is split up between the cores that it would essentially mean that the write speed would double for a dual core processor, or quadruple for a quad core processor  .

 

I am not that familiar with how the actual parity calculation is performed, may be someone with a better knowledge of software RAID can help. For example, must the parity calculation be single threaded or can it somehow be split up between cores? I would imagine that the code to manage this would be more complex than what it is currently.

I don't think parity slowness is due to cpu that much. Most likely io bottleneck. When writing first unRAID has to read from drive you are writing to then from parity drive then write to them both.