Tyranny of numbers

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The tyranny of numbers was a problem faced in the 1960s by computer engineers. Engineers were unable to increase the performance of their designs due to the huge number of components involved. In theory, every component needed to be wired to every other component (or at least many other components) and were typically strung and soldered by hand. In order to improve performance, more components would be needed, and it seemed that future designs would consist almost entirely of wiring.