Computational Science: "Simulations Tackle Ever More Complex Problems"
Rolf Jeltsch - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland
The 90s saw the emergence of easy-to-use software such as COMSOL Multiphysics, which could be used in standard situations by engineers at least for problems that could be mathematically well described.
In the meantime, computers have increased their speed dramatically. While the Z4 needed 0.5s for an addition operation and 6s for a division operation, the fastest computer today produces 367 teraFLOPS, which is 2*1012 faster. As for memory, when I asked for 4 GB in 1990, the device that ETH installed was a 1.20 meter cube in an air-conditioned room-and today memory sticks have the same capacity.
These developments have brought the ability to solve engineering problems of high complexity. You are no longer limited to computing just a simple flow, but a simulation today can deal with, for instance, chemical reactions in combustion.