> I wonder: Does it cost more to design a better routing algorithm, or fit a 
> faster CPU? ;-)

More often than not the speed it limited by the read speed from the medium 
that the map data is stored on.  In my car for example it is on DVD, which 
means that is often takes up to 30 seconds to calculate the route - which is 
a bit pants.  Some cars have hard drive systems which are way faster, and of 
course the portable navigation systems have flash based memory.

But still I find it amazing how I can be in the middle of nowhere in 
southern Germany, and then just type in my mum's address 1200 km away and in 
under a minute it tells me exactly which roads to go on to get there and 
exactly how many km it is.  Surely just knowing every single street name in 
Europe is quite a lot of data, let alone the routing information plus the 
road geometry information.

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