Some scientific problems, like simulating the arteries in the human body or screening all known chemical compounds for pharmaceutical use, require so much computing power that even the largest supercomputers balk at them. Scientists are using high-speed connections to string multiple supercomputers together, and tackling these problems with all the computing power at their disposal.

An emerging set of standards and protocols allows computers to perform "grid computing" over the Internet or other networks

This image, showing a simulation of human arteries, was created at the University of Chicago/Argonne National Laboratory, from a visualization by Joseph Insley, using Teragrid resources.