Computers: The limits to simulation: Despite the promise of superfast computers, turbulence and nonlinearity cause problems no foreseeable machine can handle

Computer simulations are used to model the behavior of many systems, from tomorrow's weather or next year's economy to new generations of integrated circuits or aircraft or the next century's fusion power plant. The basic concepts for simulation are well understood: develop a mathematical model - a series of differential equations - of a system's behavior over time, reduce it to a form that can be numerically integrated by a computer, set up the initial conditions, and let the model run. With the expected development of computers a thousand times faster than the current generation of supercomputers, will engineers be able to run simulations currently considered unfeasible?