During the 80's, supercomputing was a niche market, dominated by companies building hyper-specialized architectures, for the benefit of scientific research centers. Today, a new generation of processor architectures has emerged, such as the Systems on Chips, which bring the power of a supercomputer (several GFlops capablities) for the price of a desktop PC.

The adoption of such systems leads to a technological and economical leap, depending on the capacity of software codes to fully use the power of such processors.

In this context, the ability to adopt a strategy in terms of parallel software architecture will build an "entry barrier" for competition, and ensures software products will remain competitive with respect to operational requirements.