Recent trends in the microprocessor industry have important ramifications for the design of the next generation of high-performance computing systems. By increasing number of cores, it is possible to improve the performance while keeping the power consumption unchanged. This trend has reached all areas of computing, ranging from high-performance computers to embedded multicore systems. Multicore systems need to be able to reconfigure themselves dynamically by monitoring their own condition and the surrounding environment in order to adapt themselves to different scenarios and performance-power requirements. Runtime monitoring becomes crucial in the emerging and future parallel and distributed multicore systems due to increase in variations and fault occurrences, thermal issues as well as due to the need for various dynamic optimizations. Furthermore, to obtain optimal performance-power ratio and to have system wide adaptability, for both single-chip and physically distributed multicore systems, monitoring and reconfiguration are essential.