Multi-core's most immediate application won't be to algorithmic parallelization, which is a ball-breaker of a problem even w/o awkward theoretical results. It

Multi-core's most immediate application won't be to algorithmic parallelization, which is a ball-breaker of a problem even w/o awkward theoretical results. It will be to multitasking, VMs, etc. - scenarios where the utility of extra cores is pretty easy to see. Those scenarios make the most immediate sense inside the data center. I think part of the push towards SaaS and web-based applications will come from the fact that Moore's law will begin to apply disproportionately to hardware used to serve those solutions. Soon, the same CPU might be able to run either one desktop or 50 virtual servers, making servers cheap relative to desktops.