high-performance computing - technical definition

High-speed computing. Originally pertaining only to supercomputers for scientific research, high-performance computing (HPC) migrated to the business world with racks of high-speed servers in the datacenter. Also associated with high-performance computing are "clustering" and "high availability." Clusters refer to multiple computers tied together for greater speed and capacity, and high availability provides a certain degree of fault tolerance. The HPC term is also used by gamers as a label for the latest high-speed CPU or display adapter. See supercomputer, clustering, high availability and gaming.