The bulk-synchronous parallel (BSP) model of computing has been proposed to enable the development of portable software which achieves scalable performance across diverse parallel architectures. A number of applications of computing science have been demonstrated to be efficiently supported by the BSP model in practice.

The BSP model provides a unified framework for the design and programming of scalable servers for time-critical computing. This paper describes some of the recent developments in the area of BSP computing. 1 Internet Computing The spectacular growth of the internet provides us with a unified world-wide infrastructure for business computing. Most large companies and other organisations are now using the internet to simplify and improve the efficiency of their numerous business processes. In many cases they are also developing private internal intranets to improve productivity within the organisation. Online electronic commerce is now clearly emerging as the "killer app" for the internet. The internet computing model is based on the standard client-server relationship in which a variety of simple clients are supported by complex, powerful servers. On the client side, cheap commodity PCs, NCs and information appliances provide appropriate hardware and software. Languages such as Java pro...