On scientific research, applications software development, and industrial use of massively parallel computing systems

A healthy massively parallel computing system industry requires a well-defined market for their products. The market for massively parallel computing systems has remained stubbornly ill-defined for at least a decade. The primary reason for this is that industrial corporations have not been able to measure value in the new computing technology, due to the absence of commercially supported application software packages for these systems. It is essential for the well-being of everyone engaged in massively parallel computing, from research institutions to industrial end users, and particularly the computer builders themselves, that ways be found to ameliorate this state of affairs. This paper analyses the situation, and proposes some procedures whose implementation would ease the transfer of newly developed application technologies from research groups into the hands of end users, who can then employ massively parallel computers to solve practical industrial problems.<>