Physicist proposes a new type of computing at SXSW

True, and I love AMD and wish they were still competing effectively. No doubt if they were, the recent (relative) stagnation in chip price depreciation would not have been so pronounced.

But it's important to remember how innovations such as these change the landscape for competition. As a large pseudo-monopoly, Intel can be complacent, but not indefinitely. While the barrier to entry is very high in chip fab, and maybe insurmountable by anyone assuming current chip designs, there are a lot of very well capitalized electronics corporations in the world. If they believe a new manufacturing process will be required for the next generation in chips and Intel's margins are too high, they may well seize upon the opportunity to go after it.

This type of research it exactly what is needed to help sew the seeds for those next generation processor technologies that will help shake up the competitive landscape and dislodge the stodgier players who sit on high margins and care more for next quarter rather than the next decade.

The next revolution is widespread GPGPU programming, which can yield great increase in performance when leverage correctly. Java 8 already have libraries for HSA and Java 9 will support it out of the box. And this is AMD lead technology.

As a consumer I personally haven't seen the 'killer app' needed to require such horsepower. Rather, it seems Intel is focusing on the next logical thing -- low power, more efficient chips.

Market competition is good, but it isn't enough for progress either. Current microprocessors are quickly reaching fundamental physical limits. We will still see speed increases from architectural and algorithmic development, but not from faster (...5Ghz) processors.

I, too, was sure it was going to be Wolfram - I was going to comment to that effect, too, because it's faintly amusing that it's not Wolfram doing "a new kind of <thing>".

My comment was hardly tearing down Wolfram. I stated pretty clearly that I have nothing against him and that he's a genius. I was simply pleased when I saw it was something different.