The emergence of computing in the past few decades has changed forever the pursuit of scientific exploration and discovery. Along with traditional experiment and theory, computer simulation is now an accepted "third paradigm" for science. Its value lies in exploring areas in which solutions cannot be revealed analytically and experiments are unfeasible, such as in galaxy formation and climate modelling. Researchers in many fields have been eager to capitalise on the innovations of computer scientists: new software tools and parallel supercomputers. This trend has accelerated as access to high-performance computing (HPC) clusters - servers linked up to behave as one - and ever more software for parallel applications has become available. Process-heavy simulations that run on graphics-processing units are now common.
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