Quite an interesting article this one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15758057
Intel has developed its new teraflop Knights Corner chip as a co-processor to do a similar task to that some GPU's now do. Namely run calculations independant of the CPU, and I suppose for supercomputing purposes it makes sense. It means you can have the CPU looking after the computer and it's processes and all of the serious number crunching being done by a dedicated chip.
I did like this comment as well which put's it into perspective somewhat:

Computer power has come a long way since 1997 when Intel showed off its first one teraflops supercomputer, which required nearly 10,000 Pentium II chips and filled 72 computing cabinets. It cost $55m.