We received word this morning that Tom's Hardware will challenge individual overclockers and overclocking teams to achieve extreme clock rates or demonstrate extreme methods to push processors to their limit. That of course means that they do look for ideas that would involve, for example, liquid nitrogen.

To us, it looks like the extreme overclocking purpose has lost some appeal in recent years and it has become much more difficult to justify extreme measures to drive the GHz barrier higher. From a technology view, however, it is always interesting to see what theoretical performance hides in the processors you can buy off-the-shelf today.

If you are playing with the idea to participate in this competition (which includes paid travel expenses to and From Los Angeles, food, drinks and prizes), you can get more information here. And yes, start thinking about how you can get that Skulltrail past 6 GHz rather sooner than later.