I don't know who here is old enough to remember the good old days of the 286/ 386/ 486 CPU's and their SX/DX Variations, so I'll quickly explain. In those days there was a main general purpose processor, and a specialised mathematical processor designed to boost large maths calculations. Great for games. Since the 586 the SX/DX terms were no longer used as the mathematical co-processor was intergrated into all CPU's.
Today, with multicore technology on it's way up, (intel are working on a quad core atm) CPU manufacturers are looking towards more clever CPU Design. The idea at the moment is that the CPU's HyperTransport bus, to allow first or thrid party co-processors direct access to the same transport ring (called AMD's Torrenza initiative) as the CPU and RAM. So, potentially, rather than buying a physiX card, you could buy a chip instead. With AMD's proposed buyout of ATI, it's also entirely possible we could see 3D graphics processing going the same way. No longer would you have to worry about PCI/AGP/PCI-E interfaces, it would become a matter of picking the right co-processor and shoving it in.
This of cause would make minituraization much easier. Laptops would of cause benefit greatly as standard hardware could be inserted into motherboards, rather than specialised miniature versions of exising hardware. The standard PC could become smaller than a playstation or X-BOX, in theory. Devices such as TV cards, and sound cards could be firmly moved to the realm of USB, or built directly into the motherboard.
