On Special-purpose Hardware Clusters for High-performance Computational Grids

The problem of incorporating advanced hardware resources into a grid computing environment is considered. An experimental special-purpose cluster of machines is designed and placed into service on a prototypical grid. The cluster is populated with CAD workstations, PCs and reconfigurable devices, and then used to develop accelerated implementations for amenable applications. Access mechanisms are devised so that users may request either software solutions, which may be satisfied by our cluster or a variety of other clusters resident on the grid, or accelerated solutions, which can only be satisfied by hardwareenhanced clusters such as ours. Preliminary results are described. A number of continuing research issues are