Glossary

compute node

A node type where parallel and threaded applications should be run. These nodes typically have large core counts, and a high amount of memory per core. The srun is typically used to launch parallel jobs on these nodes.

data transfer node

A node type that is configured for the transfer of data files across local and remote file systems.

DTN

See data transfer node.

front-end node

See login node.

login node

A node type that is mainly used for interactive, and single threaded application usage. This is the node type where users are placed when accessing a system.

MPI (Message Passing Interface)

is a portable message-passing standard designed to function on parallel computing architectures. See Message Passing Interface (MPI)

PMI/PMIx (Process Management Interface, PMI for Exascale)

provides the interface between the system’s job scheduler and MPI processes. See PMI/PMIx overview (Slurm documentation), PMIx (Process Management Interface for Exascale), OpenPMIx GitHub (overview + documentation)

Slurm

An open source cluster management and job scheduling system. It typically uses srun to launch parallel applications