Web based metacomputing

Programming tools that are simultaneously sustainable, highly functional, r obust and easy to use have been hard to come by in the HPCC arena. This is partially due to the difficulty in developing sophisticated customized syst ems for what is a relatively small part of the worldwide computing enterpri se. Thus, we have developed a new strategy - termed High Performance Commod ity Computing (HPCC) [G. Fox, W. Furmanski, HPCC as high performance commod ity computing, in: I. Foster, C. Kesselman (Eds.), Building National Grid, http://www.npac.syr.edu/users/gcf/HPcc/HPcc.html] - which builds HPCC progr amming tools on top of the remarkable new software infrastructure being bui lt for the commercial web and distributed object areas. We add high perform ance to commodity systems using multi-tier architecture with Globus metacom puting toolkit as the backend of a middle-tier of commodity web and object servers. We have demonstrated the fully functional prototype of WebFlow dur ing Alliance'98 meeting. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved .