I/O and Memory Requirements

Consider a reasonable problem size using a grid. Assuming a few hundred variables per grid point, the calculation would require 1-10 TeraFLOPS of memory. Typically, one would like to store the values of each variable at least 1,000 times during the calculation, which would require approximately 10 petabytes of data storage. If this calculation could be completed in 10 hours of cpu time, the required I/O speed would be one petabyte per hour. This should be considered as only a representative example, and is certainly not an extreme case. Many simulations will require significantly more capabilities than this, particularly in the areas of storage and I/O speed.