The term high performance computing (HPC) refers to the use of (parallel) supercomputers and computer clusters, that is, computing systems made of multiple (usually mass-produced) processors linked together in a single system with commercially available interconnects. This is in contrast to mainframe computers, which are generally monolithic in nature. While a high level of technical skill is needed to assemble and use such systems, they can be created from off-the-shelf components. Because of their flexibility, power, and relatively low cost, HPC systems increasingly dominate the world of supercomputing. Usually, computer systems in or above the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers.
The term is most commonly associated with computing used for scientific research. A related term, High-performance technical computing (HPTC), generally refers to the engineering applications of cluster-based computing (such as computational fluid dynamics and the building and testing of virtual prototypes). Recently, HPC has come to be applied to business uses of cluster-based supercomputers, such as data warehouses, line-of-business (LOB) applications and transaction processing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)