In contemporary research, the supercomputer now ranks, along with radio telescopes, particle accelerators and the other apparatus of "big science," as an expensive resource, which is nevertheless essential for state of the art research. Supercomputers are usually provided as shar.ed central facilities. However, unlike, telescopes and accelerators, they are find a wide range of applications which extends across a broad spectrum of research activity. The difference in performance between a "good" and a "bad" computer program on a traditional serial computer may be a factor of two or three, but...