Interesting term I learned today: Parallel Computing

Guess I must be sounding quite ignorant and stupid, but I had never realized the new challenges the software world is facing as the Intels and AMDs of the world move to a new paradigm (not new actually), of manycore processors. Apparently, Andy Grove had coined the term "Software Spiral" (didn't know he had coined any other famous term besides "Inflection Point"..:)) to explain the relationship between chip manufacturers and software writers - that as the processing power of chips goes on increasing, newer softwares are written to exploit the increased computational capabilities. However a few years back, that relationship gave way. Till then, the concept of computation was akin to a single lane road that was being widened by the chip makers to support higher processing demands. But apparently, they all realized that their chips were generating far too much heat - for all the transistors that they were trying to fit into a single piece of silicon - and even causing them to melt in certain cases (can imagine. My 256MB NVIDIA 8600 GT itself never stays below 67-70 deg Celsius at any time). The chip makers had reached a "Power Wall". So they started adding "lanes" to the highway - by adding multiple cores to a single block. And thats where the "Software Spiral" ended. Till date, major IT powerhouses are struggling to exploit the potential of manycore and have not been very effective. Apparently, by late 2010, the world of personal computing may see 8 core processors in the market (and I was surprised to know iPhone has 3 processors!) and therefore there is frantic race in the IT world these days to be a first mover in this area...