Somewhat off topic, but see: http://www.intel.com/research/platform/terascale/teraflops.htm?iid=newstab+supercomputing
This is astounding. This 80-core chip runs at 3.16 GHz and consumes 62 W. It is as powerful as the worlds biggest computer circa 1996, ASCI Red, which used "nearly 10,000 Pentium Pro processors running at 200MHz and consumed 500kW of power plus an additional 500kW just to cool the room that housed it."
I discussed multi-core MPP computers briefly in my book, in the beginning of chapter 10.
- Jed
