1. Perhaps we need to actually have the hardware before we can start playing with it, and come up with solutions. That's how it usually goes.

2. Maybe they are jumping ahead to "many-core". Instead ask: what can we do with this extra silicon? In the past this lead to cache; pipelining; a faster multiplication technique; on-board maths "co"-processor. Today, it gives us systems-on-a-chip; hardware video-decoding; absurd GPUs; and even physics PUs.

I spoke to the person who developed that multiplication technique, and he said that it was due to extra silicon being available - it was inconceivable before then, in that people did not conceive of it because they could not conceive of something so wasteful of silicon.