The advance in telecommunications and computer technology within the last decades is representative for the technological progress of the society. This highly visible progress is strongly driven by the development of new and more powerful electromagnetic devices and electric circuits, whose behavior is abstractly described by Maxwell's Equations (see Moore's Law). Their simulation yields large systems of equations, that are tightly coupled and due to higher integration and increasing frequencies additional multiphysical phenomena must be taken into account.

In those complex applications one faces typically one or several of the following subproblems (for example when modeling a desktop computer)

• electric network simulation (of the main board)
• semiconductor device simulation (quantum effects in the main processor)
• thermal effects (heating of the processor)
• gas dynamics (turbulences due to cooling)
• electromagnetic fields (due to antennas and the power supply).