Intel did try and push multimedia P2P application development. Basically, these apps would have us streaming video to each other, and sharing localized images, and rich media. We'd hold virtual reality conferences. We'd be training on archived digital media, audio and video. We'd be collaborating and interacting with documents, audio and video.
Encoding uses CPU cycles.
There's the always reliable networked games. Yet, none of this added up to demand for performance. We found it hard to understand how P2P, other than the fact that it is a marketing buzzword, could be an effective driver of high-performance PCs. Intel makes the argument that companies are building P2P infrastructures, and they should be planning ahead by buying a high performance PC now so that it can meet the demands of future applications. Of course, this is not too different to what Intel has been saying in the past.