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, 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