GRADEp * : Towards Pervasive Grid Executions Cláudio F. R. Geyer 1 , Luciano C. da Silva 1 , Adenauer C. Yamin 34 , Iara Augustin 2 , Alberto E. S. Filho 1 , Maurício C. Moraes 1 , Rodrigo A. Real 3 , Gustavo C. Frainer 1 , Rafael P. Pires 2 1 Instituto de Informática – Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) Porto Alegre, RS 2 Centro de Tecnologia – Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (UFSM) Santa Maria, RS 3 Escola de Informática – Universidade Católica de Pelotas (UCPel) Pelotas, RS 4 Centro de Informática – Universidade Federal do Pelotas (UFPel) Pelotas, RS geyer, lucc, egon, mcmoraes, frainer @inf.ufrgs.br adenauer, rreal @ ucpel.tche.br august, rafaelpp @inf.ufsm.br Abstract. This paper provides an overview of our on-going work in the GRADEp middleware. GRADEp research is being developed by the GRADEp Working Group, sponsored by RNP, and aims at extending the traditionalgrid computing proposal with the notion of “pervasive grid executions” by incorpo- rating aspects of mobility of devices, users and application components. Resumo. Este artigo provê uma visão geral do trabalho em andamento no mid- dleware GRADEp. As pesquisas no GRADEp são desenvolvidas pelo Grupo de Trabalho GRADEp, mantido pela RNP, tendo por objetivo a extensão da per- pespectiva tradicional de computação em grade pela inclusão de aspectos de mobilidade de dispositivos, de usuário e de componentes das aplicações. 1. Introduction Pervasive computing promises ubiquitously support to users in accomplishing their tasks [Saha, 2003, Satyanarayanan, ]. Hardware and networking infrastructure to make this come true are increasingly becoming a reality. Cell phones now include a processor and storage, PDA-like devices are widely available and becoming increasingly powerful. Moreover, wireless networking standards, such as IEEE 802.11 and Bluetooth, provide local connectivity for mobile nodes, while the Internet provides world-wide connectivity. On the other hand, researches in GRID Computing are motivated by the need of coordinated access to shared resources in dynamic, geographically disperse, often multi- institutional, distributed environments. Foster [Foster, 2001] defines such set of individual and/or institutions involved in a common problem solving task, together with the rules that controls the relationships between the parts, a Virtual Organization. Applications developed with this kind of environment in mind also demand a high degree of both co- ordination and adaptation, since the access to shared resources in the system is inherently concurrent and the quality of such access may vary over time. Typical problems related to * Sponsored by RNP under the GRADEp Work Group.