Table of Contents

hpc0 Keywords

Supercomputers

Definition

These are devices that use electronic processing that at that given time is the fastest processing available. High performance computing utilizes these machines as their main tool for calculations.

Demonstration

In modern times they are used for calculations that involve very extensive computing. IE: Quantum physics, molecular modeling, gas exploration

System Administrator

Definition

Simply put this is a person that is in charge of a computer or a network of computers. Their duties range in software and in hardware. If a server or computer needs the software updated they are in charge of doing it. Also if there are service outages they are on top of repairing these services.

Demonstration

The software on a server is out of date, the system admin comes and updates the software to the server.

Computer cluster

Definition

A network of computing devices designed to act as one single unit.

Demonstration

A very good use of this is linking several 'slower' machines together to work together in order to compute your desired software. This is much more efficient than going out and buying a new system or upgrading your system every time you need more processing power or speed for your calculations.

FLOPS (floating-point operations per second)

Definition

This is a tool used to calculate how many operations the processor is calculating per second. It's a very useful tool in HPC if you need a calculations per second and are unsure of the machines or clusters speed.

Demonstration

It can be primarly used to calculate the processing speed of a super computer.

Virtual Machine

Definition

Demonstration

Para-Virtualization

Definition

This let's on operating system emulate several other operating systems while making the best use of the systems resources and hardware. The entire system is not emulated. This is not always the best solution as it may be more lenient on resources, the operating system must be worked on in order to let it work with this.

Demonstration

I.E. I am going to run a virtual machine on a desktop with very low resources available (very outdated computer.) So in this situation I decide to run a para-virtualization setup as it is more resource friendly even though it requires a little more work and has a few more restrictions on it compared to full virtualization.

Root User

Definition

A Unix account that has privelages to edit, save or open any files in the filesystem. It is used for system administration.

Demonstration

Someone is trying to do a VM install but they cannot download and install packages as they are not a root user. They then log in as root and they are now allowed to download and install the packages.

Formatting/Reformatting a Drive.

Definition

Completely erasing a memory allocation to ground zero and then beginning it a new with a new file system (usually the same as before).

Demonstration

At the beginning of a VM install you would usually reformat the drive and do a frech install of the OS. There isn't anything on the drive that is of any real use, so you have no use in keeping anything on the drive intact. Therefore, erase it and start fresh.

hpc0 Objective

hpc0 Objective

State the course objective

Definition

In your own words, define what that objective entails.

Method

State the method you will use for measuring successful academic/intellectual achievement of this objective.

Measurement

Follow your method and obtain a measurement. Document the results here.

Analysis

Reflect upon your results of the measurement to ascertain your achievement of the particular course objective.