| CPU | Central Processing Unit |
| Bit | The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values usually represented as “1” or “0”. |
| Byte | The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. |
| RAM | Random access memory |
| Clock speed | The rate at which the CPU executes a work cycle. |
| ALU | Arithmetic Logic Unit |
| HPC | High-performance computing |
| OS | Operating system |
| FLOPS | Floating point operations per second |
| Node | A compute node is a single unit of a larger system called cluster. It is characterized by its own OS, memory, and network connection. |
| Cluster | An ensemble of compute nodes interconnected by a fast network system, and set to perform tasks in a collaborative framework controlled and scheduled by a software. In this course Cluster, Server, Remote machine, and Super computer will be used as synonyms. |
| GUI | Graphical user interface |
| CLI | Command-line interface |
| SSH | Secure Shell protocol |
| MPI | Message-passing interface |
| Rank | Integer number indentifying each processor in a parallel environment. |
| Point-to-point communication | Basic type of comminication in MPI involving only one sender and one receiver. |
| Collective communication | Information sent to a collection of processes. It could be in the form of a broadcast to all processes, or as a scatter send to only a selection. |
| Gather call | Call usually issued by the master process to gather results (or data) from other processes. |
| SFTP | Secure file transfer protocol |