On the Future of the Centralized Computing Environment

Bill Joy, of Sun Microsystems, Inc., states very forcefully in the preceding paper exactly why we have to change our way of doing things. Building upon what Bill said, I would first like to discuss structural changes. By way of background, I should mention that I have been a supercomputer user all of my adult life—for at least the last 20 years. During the past year, I worked closely with Larry Smarr (see Session 10) at the University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), so I have learned what it is like on the other side of