Metacomputing

What is metacomputing?
Metacomputing is a technology designed to integrate multiple computing resources to develop a wide variety of business, management, industrial, and software applications. Metacomputing technology is also used to collect, interpret, and analyze data from various databases and devices.

The goal of a metacomputing system is to enable transparent resource and network heterogeneity by effectively using all network grid resources.
The concept of metacomputing was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in the late 1980s, when programming engineers realized that increasing computing requirements required multiple connections of the computer system. The most recent metacomputing developments include large computer grids that function like virtual networked supercomputers.

A metacomputing system consists of the following components:

- A set of loosely coupled knots
- A comprehensive set of services that allow a network to operate beyond the capacity of a single system

Metacomputing benefits include:

- Superior graphics
- Solves complex distributed computing problems
- Offers high-performance computing in data-intensive applications
- Reduces bandwidth by using a single high-speed network to connect computers in different locations