Lots of good uses for a DSP, they make very powerful encryption engines ( for ssl-based webservers, vpn boxes, password crackers, freenet nodes, and so on ) and media numbercrunchers ( mp3 / mpeg / divx encoding and decoding ).
The Altivec unit used by Motorola in their newer CPUs is a DSP, which is why those Mac systems that use them are pretty badass when performing media computation, like image manipulation in photoshop, video editing and so on. Mind you, it takes up a huge amount of the silicon area on the cpu, and has stopped the clock speed from ramping up as fast as in the x86 world, so there are always compromises..
You would be amazed how smooth a proper OS running on a dual or quad cpu system is, compared to the same OS running on a single cpu. And being able to run compilers, encoders or whatever and take advantage of all of that power is marvellous, it churns through things very fast.
Oh and Xordan, I imagine there are some very bruised egos at Intel now that they have been forced to admit that AMDs 64 bit technology ( x86-64 instruction set ) is superior to their own.. they are including it in the newest Xeons and Pentium 4\'s now, but they call it EMT64 instead.. maybe they should put a big \"AMD Compatible!\" sticker on the cpu and any systems using it. Even Microsoft are dropping support for Itanium in their upcoming version of windows, and HP are abandoning it too even though they helped Intel with the design..