In the debut of desktop computing, general-purpose microprocessors opened the door to affordable single-user systems. The limited power of those early CPUs meant that almost every advance in chip speed - or expansion of address space - yielded substantial improvement in visible and relevant performance. Every year, announcements at the Microprocessor Forum told the industry what new chips would propel the next wave of PC and server sales.

At this year's Microprocessor Forum, in San Jose, Calif., conference founder Michael Slater ruefully observed that two decades of Moore's Law progress have put the microchip industry, perversely, in the position of having more power to sell than most PC buyers can use. "Raw compute horsepower," said Slater in remarks at the end of the forum's first day, "is the easy part. Yes, faster processors are enabling components - but the computer science of next-generation usability is years behind the hardware."

The result, Slater warned, is that "there will not be volume demand at the leading edge" - at least, not the kind of demand that historically greeted landmark microchips, such as Intel Corp.'s 386, 486 and Pentium, with hordes of eager buyers. The resulting challenge for microprocessor designers, he said, will increasingly be to focus on "solutions, not horsepower."

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