I've read somewhere that functional programming is suitable to take advantage of multi-core trend in computing. I didn't really get the idea. Is it related to the lambda calculus and von neumann architecture?
Functional programming minimizes or eliminates side effects and thus is better suited to distributed programming. i.e. multicore processing.
In other words, lots of pieces of the puzzle can be solved independently on separate cores simultaneously without having to worry about one operation affecting another nearly as much as you would in other programming styles.