With the wonders of exponentiality, also come exponential monsters! You can read here^(*) a lucid description of those lurking behind supercomputers:

So the worry is not that the monster I’ve been discussing will come out of the closet. It’s already out. The people who run the largest supercomputers battle it every day. The concern, really, is that the rate of faults it represents will grow exponentially,

(…)

So many of the faults that arise in future supercomputers will no doubt be innocuous. But the ones that do matter are nevertheless increasing at an alarming rate. So the supercomputing community must somehow address the serious hardware and software challenges they pose. What to do is not yet clear, but it’s clear we must do something to prevent this monster from eating us alive.

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(*) via my colleague Victor Tribaldos

Feature Image: Titan