On the role of distributed computing in Symbolic Computation for Algebraic Topology

In this work, we report on the preliminary analysis carried out in order to undertake the task of designing and building distributed systems for Symbolic Computation in Algebraic Topology. We try to make explicit how the peculiarities of the programs computing homology and homotopy groups can influence on the development of distributed systems to perform the same calculations. We stress not only on the (well-known) benefits of distributed computing, but also in the challenges and difficulties that appear due to the distinctive characteristics of our domain of computation.