Desktop Grids, consisting of idle pc's are explored more and more as a not so expensive computing resources. Most important characteristics, of these types of Grids, are the "pull technology" and the voluntary character. "Pull" means it is the idel PC requesting work, not some job management system pushing work to it. The volontary character means one cannot count on the availability of the PC's. These pose all kinds of questions that will be discussed during this workshop.

From a business point of view, it is not clear what the business value of voluntary PC's is, if reliable SLA's can be provided and what the operating costs of heterogenous distributed Desk Top Grids are.

Workshop sessions:

1. AlmereGrid

AlmereGrid is a next generation desktop Grid. Since it is built on top of fiber based broadband, a considerably larger class of problems, both scientific and commercial, can be solved than is possible with current Internet based desktop Grids.

It is unique in that it does also addresses, non-computer experts: both SME's and private persons.

This workshop session will present and discuss the work-in-progress of the AlmereGrid project.

This includes:

• survey and benchmark of desktop Grid systems
• survey amongst SME's and private persons on Grid expectations
• Architecture of AlmereGrid
• Use cases

Contact: Ad Emmen, info@almeregrid.nl

Web site: http://almeregrid.nl

2. Desktop Grid technology

• Officegrid, Mesh technologies
• OuterGrid, Gridsystems
• LSF and Desktop Grids: examples from Industry, Merten Slominsky, Platform Computing
• Boinc

3. Building reliable research and busines on top of Desktop Grids.

• WorldWideCommunityGrid: IBM
• Bioinformatics on Desktop Grids