According to Reuters, Intel has achieved a huge breakthrough in transistor density and speed. They call it “terahertz” technology (hint, the current technology might be similarly dubbed “gigahertz” technology–“tera” is a thousand times faster…). Apparently, it solves two of the problems that have been facing designers as they attempt to put ever more transistors on a chip–power consumption (how to run your desktop supercomputer without your own personal power plant) and heat generation/rejection (how to dump all that power into your supercomputer without having a China Syndrome in your home office).

Going by history, many of the most interesting potential applications for this are probably unpredictable, but some of the mundane guesses are real-time voice/face recognition, and total computer communication via speech/listening (“Look, Ma! No keyboard or mouse!”). It will also make it easier to both crack encryption, and to create more uncrackable ciphers.

I can also imagine much more realistic computer graphics and virtual-reality gaming. Moreover, with the development of cheaper full-body VR suits (and I do mean full body), I imagine that virtual sex will also be a killer app…