"The Journey of a Thousand Teraflops Begins with a Single Node?" No Way.

It is well-known that some of the best work in high-end application software gets done while a big, expensive, new system is undergoing acceptance testing. During this time scientists can sign up for large blocks of time to try out new, and maybe even crazy approaches and algorithms. Then, alas, the system disappears into “production.” From that moment on, only well-established codes are allowed on the machine, and scientists retreat to low-processor count development systems.

When Mauchly and Eckert built the ENIAC during World War II, they based their design on interviews with the reigning computers of the day, the women who staffed the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Computing Hall. They organized their circuits to carry out the same Newtonian calculations that the women did, and in the same sequential way. The resulting ENIAC, and most computers since, have had Isaac inside.