SAN MATEO, Calif. — The recession's toll notwithstanding, the upcoming 15th annual Hot Chips conference drew a near-record number of paper submissions. But the scheduled lineup shows that Hot Chips, like the industry it examines, has distinctly changed its flavor. "The focus in design now is on applications and their solutions, not on general-purpose CPUs for everything," said Pradeep Dubey, manager of innovative platform architecture at Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) and program co-chairman for the conference, which will convene Aug. 17-19 on the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto, Calif.Hot Chips traditionally has been a showcase for general-purpose CPU...