Since its inception, the computer industry has been driven by an endless quest for more
and more computing power. The ENIAC could perform 300 operations per second, easily
1000 times faster than any calculator before it, yet people were not satisfied with it. We
now have machines millions of times faster than the ENIAC and still there is demand for
yet more horsepower. Astronomers are trying to make sense of the universe, biologists
are trying to understand the implications of the human genome, and aeromaustical engineers
are interested in building safer and more efficient aircraft, and want more CPU cycles.
However much computing power there is, it is never enough.