>is Intel starting the long walk away from the x86 architecture and towards what it sees as the "next big thing" [parallel processing]?

Wasn't that the concept behind IA-64? How'd that work out for Intel, anyway?

There is already a parallel-processing language with well-developed compilers, etc. The language was occam, originally developed for the transputer. Inmos also produced a version of C which was in some ways easier to use than native occam. Occam and the transputer provided parallel execution threads and simultaneous/independent processing and i/o. Parallel processing is not new, and it is does not need a new programming paradigm, it's more a matter of thinking of old problems in a new processing topology.

Having worked with Inmos Transputers and Intel i860s in the 90s this does all sound rather familliar.

However, although there defintely is a need for a parallel programming laguage for high performance applications, for most needs this is a red herring.

Modern operating systems run many separate processes to perform individual tasks, even Windows. So once the kernel can handle a a large number of processors (not necessarily a trivial task), the general application layer can carry on as before with the many processed geninely getting run in parallel.

Indeed, when I was doing parallel simulations it was impossible to beat the overall efficiency of running a complete simulation on each processor, rather than running a succession of parallel jobs really quickly.