Resurecting this thread because it seems the right place to discuss graphical layout ideas and concepts. When @erasmo started this thread he was suggesting a more icon type UI. That could work quite nicely with a touch interface - maybe providng more benefit than some of the on-screen button ideas we have recently discussed. If we look at his ideas for icons to navigate we can see that there could be an option to replace some menus with grids of icons. (They are effectively the same thing.)
But what I wanted to discuss was the idea of laying out the chain as a grid of blocks, each block representing a processor with vertically aligned processors being in parallel and horizontal axis representing series processors. I wonder whether such a view might work in the processor options menu, maybe occupying half the screen whilst the menu list occupies the other half?