Java has potential to be a better environment for Grande application development than any previous languages such as Fortran and C++. The goal of the Java Grande Forum (JGF) is to develop community consensus and recommendations for either changes to Java or establishment of standards (frameworks) for Grande libraries and services. These language changes or frameworks are designed to realize the best ever Grande programming environment. The Java Grande Forum does not intend to be a standards body for the Java™ language per se. Rather, JGF intends to act in an advisory capacity to ensure those working on Grande applications have a unified voice to address Java language design and implementation issues and communicate this input directly to Sun or a prospective Java standards group. Java Grande Forum Process and Membership The forum conducts working meetings with a core group of active participants. These produce reports, which are reviewed in public forums and transmitted appropriately within the cognizant bodies within the Java and computational fields. The forum is open to any qualified member of academia, industry or government who is willing to play an active role. Please read the Java Grande Charter document for more information about becoming a member. The Forum was kicked off March 1,1998 at the third Java Grande conference held at Stanford University, Palo Alto. Our first major public meeting was held on November 13, 1998 as a 3-hour panel session at Supercomputing 98 in Orlando and a further meeting was held at SC 99 November 1999 in Portland, Oregon. The Forum has held numerous internal meetings and is updated at each Java Grande Conference. They were held on the weekend before JavaOne in early June 1999, 2000 and 2001. The 2001 conference is a joint meeting with ISCOPE conference. The 2002 meeting was held before OOPSLA in November 2002. There are currently no plans for a full meeting in 2003. The JGF is divided into two major areas: Numerics (Java on a single CPU and floating point issues) and Concurrency (Distributed and Parallel Java and Benchmarking)