Many scientific problems cannot be studied on a classic computer:
- not enough memory
- not enough disk space
- not enough computing power
It would take years to execute some programs.
A cluster provides high performance hardware, very high throughput and very low latency.
Inside a cluster, computers (also called « nodes ») are connected with each other. Each node consists of several CPU cores. A core execute instructions. A program can run on one core (sequential mode) or several cores (parallel or distributed mode).
Although not every job can be parallelized, a program will run much faster if several tasks can be performed at the same time.