What HPC is and is not
High Performance Computing(HPC) refers to the means of providing massive computing resources for tasks that are not suitable for desktops, laptops and , iPads and portable devices. The Tufts Cluster is designed in a typical research cluster sense for both scalability and redundancy.
The Tufts cluster does not support the following:
- MicroSoft Excel, Word processing, MicroSoft Access, MicroSoft compilers
- Web access, for example there is no Web interface for you to visit to use the cluster
- desktop integration in the most transparent sense. The cluster does not see any local devices on your computer.
- Adobe products
- X11 Desktops - various graphical interfaces
The Tufts cluster does support the following:
- RedHat linux via a variety of command line environments know as shells(bash, csh, tcsh,...)
- public domain research codes written in C, C++, fortran, python, Perl, Java
- various compilers such as gnu C, C++, Portland compilers, Intel Compilers, python, Perl, Java, lisp
- popular commercial software packages such as Matlab, Ansys, Abaqus, Mathematica, Maple, Comsol, TecPLot, and others
- parallel computation involving several approaches: threads, MPI, GPU
- distributed computing tasks via Platform LSF batch scheduler
- network attached storage