Metacomputing

Metacomputing is all computing and computing-oriented activity which involves computing knowledge (science and technology) utilized for the research, development and application of different types of computing. It may also deal with numerous types of computing applications, such as: industry, business, management and human-related management. New emerging fields of metacomputing focus on the methodological and technological aspects of the development of large computer networks/grids, such as the Internet, intranet and other territorially distributed computer networks for special purposes.

Metacomputing, as a computing of computing, includes: the organization of large computer networks, choice of the design criteria (for example: peer-to-peer or centralized solution) and metacomputing software (middleware, metaprogramming) development where, in the specific domains, the concept metacomputing is used as a description of software meta-layers which are networked platforms for the development of user-oriented calculations, for example for computational physics and bio-informatics.

Here, serious scientific problems of systems/networks complexity emerge, not only related to domain-dependent complexities but focused on systemic meta-complexity of computer network infrastructures.

Metacomputing is also a useful descriptor for self-referential programming systems. Often these systems are functional as fifth-generation computer languages which require the use of an underlying metaprocessor software operating system in order to be operative. Typically metacomputing occurs in an interpreted or real-time compiling system since the changing nature of information in processing results may result in an unpredictable compute state throughout the existence of the metacomputer (the information state operated upon by the metacomputing platform).

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