Here is an article that I found this morning. The author states that we are now have CPUs that are fast enough and that we should just upgrade our video cards to get better performance.http://www.tomshardware.com/column/20050511/index.html I think he is partially correct in that we need to be able to get data to and from the CPUs much quicker, but stopping progress on faster chips is not a very good idea. Kind of like NASA being stuck in low earth orbit for the past 30 years. I just read where the new boss at NASA wants to press on to further places away from the earth. http://remotefarm.techcentralstation.com/051005D.htmlThat is great. In order to do that, we must continue to advance the state of the art in computers for both the vehicles and the systems that monitor them. Besides what spins off the space race (for us older simmers) seems to end up on our desks or in or houses. (Personal computers, flight simulators, and video games)Fast enough, we will never be fast enough when it comes to computing speed. Maybe someday we will be able to build a computer that will come close to what the human brain is already doing now. Then maybe we will be fast enough.Terry

I guess we're fast enough for *current* software - we're in a kind of deadlock at the moment - games won't become more complex/realistic unless computers become faster, but now they're saying computers are fast enough because no software needs a faster CPU..I think dual core is mostly a result of CPU manufacturers hitting a proverbial brick wall - they can't make the cores any faster so now they bolt several of them to each die instead. Hopefully some new tech will allow them to catch up with moore's law again.

You might be right. It seems the latest super computers are just a bunch of desktops units wired together.Terry