On the topic about desktop/laptop/mainstream CPU,
I think that the onlly thing that will shake the market is a new good general puropse architechture.
x86 and x86_64 are not that bad but their designs are super-old (I programmed some x86 ASM recently... that stuff is needlessly complex). They was not thought to be multi-core instruction sets. I hope for a GP-GPU style main chip, in which we will be able to plug buses(SATA, PCI, not actual buses) and peripherals in,offering completely asynchronous tasks regarding said peripherals.... oooh I dream. BUT, this will only work with x86_64 retrocompatibility, and that won't happen (unless Intel does it) so, I think we're stuck.
I don't think that AMD will be able to light up a full CPU revolution, even if I like AMD as a company more than Intel (and especially Nvidia <- these a-holes don't open source anything), Intel surely has something ready, even if I don't think that a 8 thread i5 is coming this generation....
Anyway, we shall all start a movement about ultra-concurrent CPUS for General Purpose computing. Definitely.
