Here's an interesting development

[unixronin]

Amid continuing problems getting its four-core processors to market, it appears AMD will be repackaging four-core processors with minor faults on one core and selling them as triple-core processors.

Now tell me:  What was your first thought?

Yeah.  Mine was, "I wonder how long it's going to be before somebody hacks up a fault-tolerant Linux/BSD/whatever (or perhaps a completely custom OS) that runs a separate kernel thread on each core, with cross-checking and two-of-three majority voting?"

I mean, come on.  It's the obvious use for a triple-core processor.