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Intel's Quad Core CPU Reviewed
Gr8Apes is one of many to let us know that Tom's Hardware Guide has posted a review of Intel's new Kentsfield quad core processor. From the article: "Even expert opinions are deeply divided, ranging from 'more cores are absolutely necessary' to 'why do I need something more than my five-year-old PC system?' Although the Core 2 quad-core processors are not expected to hit retail channels before October, Tom's Hardware Guide had the opportunity to examine several Core 2 Quadro models in the test labs. We would like to make it clear that these samples were not provided by Intel."
It sounds like you took something out of context. The application domain greatly impacts how you can go about scaling. Adding a box to a cluster only helps with certain types of problem domains. In some cases, it helps a lot. In other cases, it can actually hurt performance. As a rule of thumb, clustered programming is trickier than SMP programming. Not to mention, clusters are far less common that are SMP solutions.
Really, the limiting factor for SMP right now is the lack of application support. The secondary issue is, in my experience, the vast majority of programmers have no idea how to go about effecitvely using multiple threads unless the problem can be neatly addressed by a consumer/producer model. And guess what...a lot of problems don't fit well with that solution. Thus we have a nasty cycle of one feeding into the other.