The days where the speed of a processor in Hz doubled every year or two are long over, at least until a major breakthrough is discovered in processor technology. So no, we won't see a 9 GHz Pentium 6 that's 3 times faster than a Pentium 4 @ 3 GHz anytime soon, but we will see a processor thats faster, even if its only running @ 4 GHz. Efficiency, cache sizes, manufacturing process, etc, can all be improved to make the processor alot faster without adding much more heat and the need for better cooling solutions like a simple increase in Hz. Conroe won't even break 3 GHz at the time of its release- but it will be much, much faster than a 3 GHz Pentium D. A Conroe EE that may be clocked @ 3.0 GHz w/ a 1333 MHz FSB and possibly 2x3-4MB of cache has the potential to be 2x as fast as a Pentium D at the same frequency- yet it will produce the same amount of heat (or probably less, because of a smaller process, 65nm, soon 45nm), and wont require any new cooling solutions. Now if Intel kept the Netburst architecture and improved their cooling, they could possibly release a Pentium D @ speeds above 4GHz, which would be an improvement in speed, but would produce more heat, take up more power, and require more expensive cooling than the Conroe @ 3 GHz which would still be much faster. The point I'm trying to make here is that increasing overall processor speed by an increase in clockspeed just isnt practical anymore- increase by efficiency, larger caches, and smaller manufacturing processes IS.