HP XC System Software Administration Guide Version 2.1

P
parallel application
An application that uses a distributed programming model and can run on mu ltiple pro
cessors.
An HP XC MPI appli cation is a parallel application. That is, all interprocessor com
munication
within an HP XC parallel application is per fo rmed through calls to the MP I message p
assing
library.
PXE
Preboot Ex ecution Environmen t. A standard client/server interface that allows networked
computers t hat are not yet installed with an operating system to be configured and booted
remotely. PXE booting is config ured at the BIOS level.
R
resource manager role
Nodes with this role manage the allocation of resources to user applications.
role
A set of services that are assigned to a node.
Root Administration Switch
A component of the adm inistrative network. The top switch in the Administrativ e Netw ork; it
may be a logical network switch comprised of multiple hardw are switches. The Root Console
Switch is connected to th e Root Administrati on Switch.
root node
A server within the XC system that is connected directly to the R oo t Admi nistr ati on Switch.
RPM
Red Hat Package Manager.
1. A ut ility th at is used for software package managem ent on a Linux operating system, m ost
notably to install and remove software packages.
2. A software package that is capable of being installed or removed with the RPM software
package management utility.
S
serial application
A command or user program that does not use any distributed shared-memory form of
parallelism. A serial application is basically a single-processor application that has no
communication library calls (for example, MPI, PVM, GM, or Portals).
An example of a serial application is a standard Linux command, such as the ls command.
Another exa mp le of a serial application is a program th at has been built on a Linux system
that is binary com patible with the HP XC environment, but do es not contain any of the H P
XC infrastructure libraries.
SMP
Symmetr ic multipro cessing. A system with two or more CPUs tha t share equa l (symmetric)
access to all of the facilities of a computer system, such as the mem ory and I/O subsystems.
In an HP X C system, the use of SMP technology increases the number of C PUs (amount of
computational power) available per unit of space.
ssh
Secure Shell. A shell p rog ram for logging in to and executing co mm a nd s on a rem ote computer.
It can provide secure encrypted communications between two untrusted hosts over an insecure
network.
Glossary-5