Distributed, Reconfigurable Simulation in Harness

Harness is an experimental metacomputing system based upon the principle of dynamic reconfigurability both in terms of the computers and networks that comprise the virtual machine, and in the services offered by the virtual machine itself. In this paper we describe how the capability to reconfigure the virtual machine plugging services on demand can be exploited to design dynamically reconfigurable distributed simulation applications. These applications are characterized by a high level of fault tolerance and by the capability to adapt to run-time changes both in the set of available resources and in the simulation model itself. The paper adopts as an example application the simulation of the process of crystal growth.