Ericsson could have had a need for multicore already back in 1997, when the first SMP Erlang prototype was written, but the space and power budgets for the proc

Ericsson could have had a need for multicore already back in 1997, when the first SMP Erlang prototype was written, but the space and power budgets for the processor boards made it impossible to get any matching hardware for it. SMP in those days was not multicore, but several CPUs. It was only usable in servers - not in embedded systems.