Special issue on advanced numerical algorithms for large-scale computations: Introduction Computers are becoming faster and faster. Their capabilities for dealing with very large data sets are steadily increasing. Problems that require a lot of computing time and rely on the use of huge files of input data can now be treated on powerful workstations and PCs (such problems had to be treated on powerful mainframes only 5-6 years ago). Therefore, it is necessary to answer the following two important questions: 1. Are the computers that are available at present large enough? 2. Do we need bigger (here and in the remaining part of this introduction, "a bigger computer" means a computer with larger memory discs, not a physically bigger computer) and faster computers for the treatment of the large-scale scientific problems, which appear in different fields of science and engineering and have to be resolved either now or in the near future?
展开▼
