Supercomputing Technology Landing in Your Lap(top)

Leaps forward in chip design are bringing supercomputing technology to personal computers and corporate data centers, Business Week writes. Hardware makers are coming up with more ways to cram colossal amounts of computing power into small spaces, but software is lagging a bit behind. Microsoft is building a brain trust in a bid to develop new applications.

Using chips that can perform up to a trillion calculations a second for personal computing could change the way people interact with machines—if they really want to. "Is this whole infatuation with performance something that has moved beyond what the vast majority of users really care about?" asked Intel's technology chief. (More microchips stories.)