A return to performance oriented computing ?

This article (also found on Slashdot) notes that the processor clockspeed march has slowed down considerably in the last few years. Although projections at one point estimated a 10GHz processor by 2005, there is much less focus on raw processing speed and a lot more focus on quiet, resource efficient computing.

What does this mean for programmers ? There is no longer an abundance of clock cycles to waste on applications. At some point, the 2 and 3GHz chips of today will become the 4 and 16MHz chips of a decade ago. With a cap on the processing speed, will more efficient languages such as C see a renaissance ? Will their interpreted competitors see a marked speed improvement ? Does this signify a return to the era where the choice of language/toolkit/algorithm is realistically influenced by it's performance ?