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Definition: high-performance computing


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 are multiple computers tied together for greater speed and capacity, and high availability provides a certain degree of fault tolerance. The HPC term has also been used by gamers as a label for the latest high-speed CPU or graphics card. See supercomputer, clustering, high availability, performance core, gaming PC and Xeon Phi.