Advances in chip design are prompting companies to take advantage of the potential power. But the necessary new markets and software are laggingDuring the last technology boom, Dan Reed, a longtime supercomputer researcher and tech policy expert, stayed put in a professorship at the University of Illinois and managed its National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), even as the fabled lab hatched Netscape and helped set off the explosive growth of the Internet. During the dot-com bust that followed, Reed hunkered down in another faculty job at the University of North Carolina.
Now the computer industry is poised for a second transformation, in which supercomputing technology is trickling down to corporate data centers and desktop PCs, supplying them with unprecedented power. This time, Reed isn't missing out. On Dec. 3, he became the latest high-profile hire in a stable of supercomputer scientists that Microsoft (MSFT) is assembling in Redmond, Wash., to study how technology that has been the province of top-flight universities, government research labs, and a few huge corporations can transform everyday computing. "We have an opportunity to rethink issues at a deep level," says Reed, 50. "I said if the surf was up again, I was going to grab my board."
Bye-Bye Joysticks
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