While semiconductor makers were coming out with ever more powerful chips, making an inexpensive desktop videoconferencing system inevitable, Austin, Tex.

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Consumer demand for more powerful chips could pick up once households have broadband connections to video-and graphics-rich Web sites, which require a lot of processing power.

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In the case of memory chips, the latest factories can make more-powerful chips, more economically.

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Chips will be 64 times more powerful at the end of the decade.

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