The NRW Metacomputing Initiative ⋆

Abstract. In this paper the Northrhine-Westphalian metacomputing initiative is described. We start by discussing various general aspects of metacomputing and explain the reasons for founding the initiative with the goal to build a metacomputer pilot. The initiative consists of several subprojects that address metacomputing applications and the generation of a suitable infrastructure. The latter includes the components user interface, security, distributed file-systems and the management of a metacomputer. At last, we specifically discuss the aspect of job scheduling in a metacomputer and present an approach that is based on a brokerage and trading concept. 1 The Need for High Performance Computing High Performance Computing (HPC) has become an important tool for research and development in many different areas [2,14]. Originally, supercomputers were mainly used to address problems in physics. Then, the term Grand Challenges has been introduced in the eighties to describe a variety of technical problems which require the availability of significant computin