High performance computing
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "High_performance_computing".

High-performance computing (HPC) uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computing problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers.

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Overview

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.

High-performance computing (HPC) is a term that arose after the term "supercomputing." HPC is sometimes used as a synonym for supercomputing; but in other contexts, "supercomputer" is used to refer to a more powerful subset of "high performance computers," and the term "supercomputing" becomes a subset of "high performance computing." The potentially confusing overlap of these usages is apparent.

Evolving the "HPC" concept

It should be noted that there is an evolution that is happening with regards to the nomenclature surrounding the "HPC" acronym. The ‘old’ definition of HPC, High Performance Computing, was the natural semantic evolution of the 'supercomputing' market, referring to the expanded and diverse range of platforms, from scalable high-end systems to commodity clusters, blade servers and of course the traditional vector supercomputers used to attack the most complex data- and computational-intensive applications. A key trend that is currently taking root is the shift in focus towards productivity – or more precisely, how systems and technology are applied. This encompasses everything in the HPC ecosystem, from the development environment, to systems and storage, to the use and interoperability of applications, to the total user experience – all combined to address and solve real world problems.

The more current and evolving definition of HPC refers to High Productivity Computing, and reflects the purpose and use model of the myriad existing and evolving architectures, and the supporting ecosystem of software, middleware, storage, networking and tools behind the next generation of applications.

Top 500

A list of the most powerful high performance computers can be found on the TOP500 list. The TOP500 list ranks the world's 500 fastest high performance computers as measured by the HPL benchmark. Not all computers are listed, either because they are ineligible (e.g. they cannot run the HPL benchmark) or their owners have not submitted a HPL score (e.g. because they do not wish the size of their system to become public information). The list is updated twice a year, once in June at the ISC European Supercomputing Conference and again at a US Supercomputing Conference in November.

Many ideas for the new wave of grid computing were originally borrowed from HPC.

See also

External links

High Performance Research Laboratories Worldwide

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Parallel computing topics
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High-performance computing
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