Over the last decade, the definition of what is called high performance computing has changed dramatically. In 1988, an article appeared in the Journal titled “Attack of the Killer Micros” that described how computing systems made up of many small inexpensive processors would soon make large supercomputers obsolete. As a result nearly every person with computer access has some “high performance” processing. As the peak speeds of these new personal computers increase, these computers encounter all the performance challenges typically found on supercomputers.

The Grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files. High Performance Computing (HPC) has in many ways been the original driver for Grid computing and research infrastructures. It was HPC which presented the requirement for increased computational power which could not be satisfied by the existing range of HPC machines. The need to combine a number of different HPC machines to tackle urgent and computationally demanding applications drove both researchers and the technology infrastructure. What distinguishes grid computing from conventional high performance computing systems is that grids tend to be more loosely coupled, heterogeneous, and geographically dispersed. Initially grid computing was used by technologically advanced scientific users. They used grid computing to experiment with large scale problems which required high performance computing facilities and collaborative work. In the next stage of development, the grid computing technology has become effective and economically attractive for large and medium size commercial companies. It is expected that eventually the grid computing style of providing computing power will become universal reaching every user in industry and business.

The International Conference on High-Performance Architecture and Grid Computing (HPAGC-2011) is the Information Research Conference aimed at presenting and exchanging current research themes and experiences and fosters a relationship among universities, research institutes, industry and policy makers to take stock of the current developments and have a look into the future trends in this area.