Supercomputers may date back to the 1960s, but it is only recently that their vast processing power has begun to be harnessed by industry and commerce, to design safer cars, build quieter aeroplanes, speed up drug discovery, and subdue the volatility of the financial markets.
The need for powerful computers is growing, says Catherine Rivière chair of PRACE, the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe. If we are going to tackle modern challenges - personalised medicines, sustainable energy supply and climate change - and improve industrial processes, we will need "new tools to cope with big data; new working processes to take into account multi-disciplinary problems and teams; and new physical models,” she said.
