What's the hurry?

By Marcus Chown NEVER do today what you can put off until tomorrow. It’s every slacker’s motto, but in the world of high-performance computing it can make perfect sense. If you have a particularly tough calculation to perform, it pays to wait until a better computer comes along. This conclusion, which will be music to the ears of procrastinators the world over, comes from a team led by Chris Gottbrath at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. “By starting the calculation later, when your money can stretch to buying a more efficient computer, you’ll finish earlier,