Why use a cluster?

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.