Do We Use Hardware in a Proper Way?

The paper deals with some problems arising in the course of development of modern high-performance computing systems. The gain in performance is achieved mainly by increasing the clock frequency of the microprocessors retaining, however, the classical architectures. At the same time, unjustifiable growth of software is observed. As one of the possible ways to overcome these difficulties extensive use of application-specific processors is proposed, especially of parallel processors of cellular architectures. 1 Introduction This paper contains a reiteration (or rather generalization) of our previous publications advocating the hardware support of massive computations (see, for instance, [1-5]). At the same time, it is based upon a series of new facts and approaches. It is well known that high-performance computing is going through a crisis due to drastic changes of the market. The sharp drop in government financing of high-performance computing is forcing the designers and vendors to l..