Modeling and Simulation Applications in Cluster and Grid Computing

                      Guest Editor: Dr. Helen D. Karatza,
                    Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece



A Special Issue of SIMULATION: Transactions of the Society for Modeling
and Simulation International which examines the application of modeling
and simulation in the area of Cluster and Grid Computing is planned for
2004.

Clusters and Grids have been emerged by the need for more economical means
for high-performance computing.

The availability of powerful microprocessors and high-speed networks as
commodity components are making clusters/networks of computers an appealing
vehicle for cost-effective high performance and high availability computing.
Clusters are now undoubtedly the platform of choice for most scientific, 
engineering,
commercial and industrial applications.
Cluster computing has become a hot research topic amongst academics and the
industry community.

Grid Computing or global network computing is the clustering or coupling of
a wide variety of geographically distributed resources such as
supercomputers,
storage systems, data sources, and special classes of devices, which allows
them to be used as a single unified resource and thus forms what is
popularly
known as computational grids.  Grid computing shows promises of evolving
into
the next major computing infrastructure that spans the globe.

The most straightforward way to study cluster and grid computing
without a full-scale implementation of clusters and grids is through a
modeling and simulation approach. Detailed simulation models help determine
performance bottlenecks inherent in the architecture and provide the basis
for
refining the system configuration.

Authors of papers which explore modeling and simulation studies focused on
problems in this area are invited to participate in the Special Issue.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

- Resource Management
- Scheduling and Load Balancing
- Management of Large-Scale Distributed Data
- Peer-to-Peer Computing
- Parallel computing on large scale distributed systems
- Performance analysis/modeling of multi-agent communities and design
- New Performability and dependability Schemes and Models
- Agent and Multi-agent based Cluster and Grid Computing
- Parallel I/O in Cluster Computing and Computational Grids
- Grids and High-Performance Networks
- Cluster based Networks Performance Evaluation and Scalability Studies
- Network resource allocation
- Clusters of Clusters
- Performance Evaluation and Modeling of Cluster and Grid Systems

Results of both theoretical and practical significance will be considered.

Instructions for authors etc. can be found at the Journal website at:
http://www.scs.org/pubs/simguidelines.html

Authors should email their papers (as postcript or pdf files) to the Guest
Editor:

Dr. Helen Karatza
Department of Informatics
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
54124 Thessaloniki, GREECE
E-mail: karatza@csd.auth.gr
http://agent.csd.auth.gr/~karatza
Phone: 30-2310-997974
Fax : 30-2310-996360

Important Dates
Submission deadline: September 10, 2003
Review results and acceptance decision: January 10, 2004
Final revised paper: February 25, 2004
Tentative publication date: April 2004

A cover page must be included with the name, mailing address, phone and fax
numbers, and e-mail address of the corresponding author.

Further information can be obtained by contacting Dr. Helen Karatza via:
karatza@csd.auth.gr