Application of Distributed and Grid Computing

Editor(s): Ivan Dimov, Jack Dongarra, Kaj Madseni, Jerzy Wasniewski, Zahari Zlatev

AbstractThis special issue of Future Generation Computer Systems is
devoted to modern applications of distributed and grid computing. A
relatively small number of papers were selected in order to cover
some important areas of distributed and grid computing. At the same
time we do not pretend that all important areas of this fast
developed scientific field are covered.

Our understanding is that the distributed computing is a paradigm
focusing on designing distributed, scalable, and fault tolerant
computing systems. It's often associated with computing used for
scientific research. A related term, high-performance computing,
generally refers to scientific and engineering applications of
cluster-based computing.

Grid computing is an emerging computing model that provides the
ability to perform higher throughput computing by taking advantage
of many networked computers to model a virtual computer architecture
that is able to distribute process execution across a parallel
infrastructure. Grids use the resources of many separate computers
connected by a network to solve large or very large computational
problems. Grids provide the ability to perform computations on large
data sets, by dividing them down into many smaller tasks. Dealing
with grid computing one should accept that some of subtasks will not
be performed, so that the result of grid computation should not be
very sensitive to possible lose of some subtasks. This is one of
important differences between grid and distributed computing. We
should also mention that many ideas for the new wave of grid
computing were originally borrowed from high-performance computing.

The papers selected for this Special Issue underwent a rigorous
refereeing procedure and have been accepted for publication.
KeywordsGrid Computing, Distributed memory computers, Network Computing
TypeBook [Editorship]
Book titleFuture Generation Computer Systems Special Issue Journal
Year2007    pp. 150
PublisherElsevier Science North-Holland Publishing Company
SeriesFGCS Future Generation Computer Systems
BibTeX data [bibtex]
IMM Group(s)Scientific Computing