We are on the verge of a revolution in computing, spawned by advances in computer technology. Progress in very‐large‐scale integration is leading not so much to faster computers, but to much less expensive and much smaller computers—computers contained on a few chips. These machines, whose cost‐effectiveness is expected to be staggering, will make it practical to build very‐high‐performance computers, or “supercomputers,” consisting of very many small computers combined to form a single concurrent processor.

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