Introduction to High-Performance Computing: Glossary

Glossary

The following list captures terms that need to be added to this glossary. This is a great way to contribute.

Accelerator
to be defined
Beowulf cluster
to be defined
Central processing unit
or simply processor is the (hardware) component of a computer that executes the instructions supplied by a program (software). Most modern desktop computers have multi-core processors, e.g. devices with 2 CPUs are called dual-core, with 4 cores are called quad-core and so on. Each core is a separate physical implementation of the electronic circuitry required to execute instructions.
Cloud computing
to be defined
Cluster
a collection of computers configured to enable collaboration on a common task by means of purposefully configured hardware (e.g., networking) and software (e.g. workload management).
Distributed memory
to be defined
Grid computing
to be defined
High availability computing
to be defined
High performance computing
to be defined
Interconnect
to be defined
Node
to be defined
Parallel
to be defined
Serial
to be defined
Server
to be defined
Shared memory
to be defined
Slurm
to be defined
Supercomputer
“… a major scientific instrument …”
Workstation
to be defined
Grid Engine
to be defined
Parallel File System
to be defined