High speed, wide area distributed computing for scientific imaging

We present a scenario for a fully distributed computing environment in which computing, storage, and I/O elements are configured on demand into virtual systems'' that are optimal for the solution of a particular problem. We also present an experiment that illustrates some of the elements and issues of this scenario. The goal of this work is to make the most powerful computing systems those that are logically assembled from network based components, and to make those systems available independent of the geographic location of the constituent elements.