Even looking at the Von Neumann architecture, this paints an incomplete picture, only looking at the high-end chips. I would be interested to see some similar g

Even looking at the Von Neumann architecture, this paints an incomplete picture, only looking at the high-end chips. I would be interested to see some similar graphs looking at non-x86 architectures, not to mention comparing the Atom to the Celeron of 5 and 10 years ago, and other mid-range chips. Sure, power efficiency and speed has hit a wall around 4ghz, but 2ghz and 3ghz chips are still coming down significantly in cost and power consumption. And arguably, there's simply no market demand for chips faster than 3ghz, while cheaper and more efficient 2ghz chips are in very high demand. The sort of local applications where I notice latency are games and other things where GPUs are of course better suited to the task of decreasing latency. The only time I notice my CPU pegged are when an application has run away and would be using 100% CPU regardless, or when my CPU is attempting to do something that would be better suited to a GPU (video.)