Supercomputers: Value and Trends Bill Buzbee, Computer Research and Applications Group, Computing and Communications Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545

Computers have served as an enabling technology for prediction or modeling, and as a result, modeling is now widely recognized as the third leg of science. Furthermore, computer modeling is extremely cost-effective relative to traditional prototyping and experimentation, and thus it is rapidly displacing them in scientific and engineering practice. Supercomputers greatly extend our modeling capabilities by enabling us to