t, three- dimensional games, graphics, astronomy, biosciences, and predictive modeling. Examples of applications include simulation of blood flow in the human body, space weather modeling, virtual tests for therapeutic cancer drugs, global modeling of the earth's magnetosphere, simulations of shock waves and eddies in turbulent fluids, large-scale structures of galaxies and galaxy clusters, modeling of the inter- action of proteins within individual cells, and testing models of the formation of cosmological structures. A number of these applications apply specifically to the science and engineering communities, but there will be applications designed for education and entertainment products as well. Storage Fast processors that support today's visualization and multimedia applications are just one piece of the puzzle. The second element is storage. Currently, storage density doubles every 12 months. Emerging solutions promise incredible improvements in storage density and size. xxxii Introduction Before we get into some of the developments in storage, let's quickly review some examples of storage requirements: 1.5KB (i.e., about 12,000 bits) can basically store one double-spaced type- written page. 1MB can store one long novel as text, one full-page black-and-white image, a 3-by-5-inch color picture, 2 minutes of telephone-quality sound, 7 sec- onds of CD-quality sound, or 0.04 seconds of broadcast-quality video. 4GB can store an average feature-length film. New storage devices will enable up to 1TB (terabyte) of storage; such a storage device would be able to contain 250 full-length films! The storage media available today are a huge improvement over the storage media of the past, but they're nothing compared to what we'll see in the future. Today, CD-ROMs offer a capacity of some 650MB, and DVDs offer a range of 4.6GB to 17GB, supporting a transfer rate of 600Kbps to 1.3Mbps. Some exciting new storage devices are being developed, including bacterial protein memory, holo- graphic storage systems, and magnetic se