Special purpose computers for the time domain advance of Maxwell´s equations

Several special-purpose computer designs are considered for the efficient time advance of Maxwell´s equations. These involve both paralleling and pipelining techniques with specialized hardware that takes advantage of the simplicity and symmetry of Maxwell´s equations. A time speedup of 1000 over operation on a VAX at reduced cost seems immediately achievable. There is a direct applicability to algorithms for general-purpose computers as well. An apparently new normalization for the electric and magnetic fields, the preferred use of E and H conditions at different boundaries, and an alternative method of computing Huygen´s sources are discussed