Personal Supercomputers?

A supercomputer the size of a postage stamp?

A supercomputer in 1996 (top left) capable of calculating one trillion operations per second took up about 2,000 square feet and consumed 500,000 watts. Recently, Intel unveiled an 80-core research chip (bottom right) that achieves the same calculation rate but is the size of a large postage stamp and uses about 65 watts.

Now why would anyone want one of these? (Wait a minute, isn't that what people said about the personal computer?)

Here are a few potential applications:

...these technologies could allow real-time language translation via cell phones, real-time video search by spoken phrase or image, and better recommendation systems for shopping, meal planning, and even health care.

Real-time language translation? Now that's starting to sound sci-fi. Reminds me of the American and Japanese animatronic kids talking at the end of the Spaceship Earth ride at EPCOT Center. Looks like that future is about to become reality.