# HPC as a service (HPCaaS)

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.

Source: https://university.eugo.io/glossary/hpc-as-a-service

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The distinction that matters is what you are responsible for. Buying a cluster means owning procurement, capacity planning, the scheduler, and the idle time between jobs. HPCaaS moves all of that to the provider, which changes the unit of commitment from a capital purchase to a running cluster you can shut down. It is also why an idle cluster is the largest avoidable cost on any such platform. The meter runs on time, not on work done.

## Related terms

- [High-performance computing (HPC)](https://university.eugo.io/glossary/high-performance-computing) — Running work across many machines at once so it finishes far sooner. The technique behind weather models, genomics, and large-scale simulation.
- [Idle cluster](https://university.eugo.io/glossary/idle-cluster) — A cluster still running after its work finished. It bills at the full rate, and is the largest avoidable cost for most organizations.
- [Pricing plan](https://university.eugo.io/glossary/pricing-plan) — The tier assigned to a workspace, which governs its resource limits and concurrency: how much can run, and how much can run at once.
- [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.