Preface to the Special Issue on intelligent distributed computing

Abstract

PREFACEWe are honored and pleased to open this special issue of the Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience journal focused on intelligent distributed computing.Intelligent distributed computing (IDC) faces the challenges of adapting and combining research results in the fields of intelligent computing and distributed computing. Intelligent computing develops methods and technology ranging from classical artificial intelligence, computational intelligence, and multi-agent systems to game theory. Distributed computing develops methods and technology to build systems that are composed of collaborating components deployed on computer networks. IDC sets the foundation for the development of the new generation of intelligent distributed systems.One direction of IDC is the application of nature-inspired computing methods such as swarm intelligence and genetic algorithms (GA) to develop better distributed systems. On the other hand, distributed systems can help to develop more efficient systems that employ the metaphor of bioinspiration for solving computationally difficult problems. Another direction of IDC proposes the use of intelligent software agents for the development of open and scalable distributed systems that can engage in complex intelligent processes. Intelligent software agents are endowed with high-level properties including knowledge and reasoning that make them appealing for building intelligent distributed systems.This special issue brings to the reader new research results and applications of intelligent distributed computing, with a special focus on the synergies between intelligent software agents and bio-inspired technologies on one side and parallel and distributed computing on the other side. In particular, some of the papers address interesting applications of intelligent distributed approaches in the areas of trust, security, protein structure prediction, and Semantic Web Services (SWS). We believe that the papers selected for presentation in this special issue will be a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners working in the emergent field of IDC, with a special focus for those especially interested in the recent advancements of the aforementioned research areas that are part of IDC.This issue includes extended versions of selected papers from the Fourth International Symposium on Intelligent Distributed Computing (IDC 2010) and the collocated Second International Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems Technology and Semantics (MASTS 2010), both held on 16-18 September 2010, Tangier, Morocco. There were 61 papers from 20 countries submitted to IDC 2010 and MASTS 2010 from which only 32 were accepted and included in the proceedings. From the accepted papers, related to the topic of Intelligent distributed computing, seven papers with higher review scores were selected and invited to be extended and submitted to this special issue. Finally, after two peer-review rounds, all of them were carefully revised, extended, and improved, thus being judged acceptable for inclusion in thi...