# High-performance computing (HPC)

Running work across many machines at once so it finishes far sooner. The technique behind weather models, genomics, and large-scale simulation.

Source: https://university.eugo.io/glossary/high-performance-computing

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Historically this meant an on-premises supercomputer: a fixed cluster, a job scheduler, a queue, and a procurement cycle measured in months. The compute model has not changed. Work is still split across nodes and recombined. What changed is access to it: what used to require owning a machine room is now something you request for the duration of one run. Everything these courses teach is HPC; the vocabulary is just less formal than the field's own.

## Related terms

- [HPC as a service (HPCaaS)](https://university.eugo.io/glossary/hpc-as-a-service) — High-performance computing consumed on demand rather than owned: request compute for one run, stop paying when it ends. No hardware, no scheduler to run.
- [Cluster](https://university.eugo.io/glossary/cluster) — A set of machines, one head node and one or more compute nodes, launched together to run distributed work.
- [Compute node](https://university.eugo.io/glossary/compute-node) — A machine in a cluster that executes tasks. Compute nodes do the work; the head node coordinates it.
- [Distributed computing](https://university.eugo.io/glossary/distributed-computing) — Splitting one job across several machines that work on it simultaneously. The core technique of HPC, and what the distribute decorator gives you in Python.