To appreciate the situation and act in a crisis the modelling and simulation tools currently used by security agencies will no longer do. The teaching, training and decision aids used in the security field can now profit from major advances in the area of high technology, close to the point of need and the theatre of operations. High-performance computer technologies available today, coupled with innovative working methods, are being combined to bring about a step-change.

A Leap Forward in Technology and Working Methods

The Question of Availability

The availability, now in hand, of in-theatre massive data-processing power is a direct result of a revolution in modern computing architectures. For many years, the computer industry was ruled by ‘Moore’s Law’,⁽¹⁾ which states that the number of transistors on a microprocessor doubles every two years. As a result, processing power has become progressively cheaper. Moore’s Law has thus, in a sense, shaped the IT industry. As software required more and more power it was duly provided by the next generation of processors. The law is now coming up against its limits; as transistors and processors have become ever smaller, they are now confronted by a physical limit, a thermal one in particular, which no longer permits the clock frequency, and hence the speed, of new processors to be increased. To overcome this problem, new computer architectures have appeared: general-purpose processing on graphics processing units (GPGPU), vectorial processors, system on a chip (SOC), known as ‘all-in-one systems’, etc.

All these new architectures are in fact mini-parallel processors which offer colossal processing power. They do this at a cost comparable to a conventional machine and can be used in light, portable equipment capable of being taken to operational theatres.