Filed under: Misc. GadgetsAlthough both Microsoft and Intel's R&D departments have been responsible for some nifty futuristic tech, the two companies got together last week and announced a $20M grant to two universities to "start over" and develop next-gen computing systems based around parallel processing. The grant will fund Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers at UC -Berkeley, which is kicking in another $7M, and the University of Illinois at Champaign / Urbana, which is donating $8M of its own. According to Mark Snir, head of