The computer industry hopes to fill that need-with the help of university researchers. That vision emerged during a conference on supercomputing held last month at Cornell University's Center for Theory and Simulation in Science and Engineering. The facility is one office university centers for research on super-computing established last year by the National Science Foundation. McTague said that better computers are vital to American security in the current economic wars being waged with our allies. Kenneth Wilson, a Nobel laureate in physics and director of Cornell's supercomputing center, said universities can make their greatest contribution by developing improved software.
Universities can conduct a broader range of basic research and serve as a testing ground.
McTague offered an example from his company's laboratories to illustrate the limitations of present supercomputers. A Ford engineer who was simulating the collapse of a single beam in a proposed design was forced to stop the test when the beam was only half destroyed. The same simulations must be done for a thousand other parts, McTague noted, and then again for the entire car. Increasing Complexity Wilson pointed to the complexity of current theoretical problems as another reason to build more powerful computers. But real problems range to thousands or millions of electrons.