Cluster Computing White Paper

Cluster computing is not a new area of computing. It is, however, evident that there is a growing interest in its usage in all areas where applications have traditionally used parallel or distributed computing platforms. The growing interest has been fuelled in part by the availability of powerful microprocessors and high-speed networks as off-the-shelf commodity components as well as in part by the rapidly maturing software components available to support high performance and high availability applications. This White Paper has been broken down into eleven sections, each of which has been put together by academics and industrial researchers who are both experts in their fields and where willing to volunteer their time and effort to put together this White Paper. The status of this paper is draft and we are at the stage of publicizing its presence and making a Request For Comments (RFC).