Compute Glossary
Browse 12 compute terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.
12 Compute Terms
- AI Compute
- The processing resources used to train, fine-tune, or run AI models, including GPUs, TPUs, CPUs, and the surrounding infrastructure needed to support them. AI...
- Compute Engine
- A service or subsystem responsible for executing workloads, often at the VM, container, or job-processing level. The phrase is often used for cloud compute...
- Compute Instance
- An individual virtual or physical runtime unit provisioned to execute workloads, such as a VM or managed machine in a cloud platform. Compute instances are the...
- Compute Node
- A node in a distributed system whose main role is to run computation rather than primarily store metadata or coordinate control logic. Compute nodes are common...
- Compute Optimal
- Describing a training or model setup that makes the most effective use of a fixed compute budget according to scaling-law reasoning. A compute-optimal approach...
- Compute Resource
- Any measurable computational capacity such as CPU cores, memory, GPU time, or allocated execution slots used to run software. Compute resources are often...
- Compute Unit
- A provider-defined or system-defined unit of compute capacity used for scheduling, billing, or performance abstraction. The exact meaning varies by platform,...
- CUDA
- NVIDIA's programming platform and runtime for accelerating parallel workloads on GPUs. It influences how models are trained, evaluated, or served, and it can...
- CUDA Core
- A GPU execution unit that performs many floating-point or integer operations in parallel. It influences how models are trained, evaluated, or served, and it...
- FLOPS
- Floating-point operations per second, a standard measure of numerical compute throughput often used in AI hardware discussions.
- GPU
- Graphics Processing Unit — a processor originally designed for rendering graphics but whose massively parallel architecture turned out to be ideal for machine...
- Spot Instance
- Spare cloud compute capacity sold at steep discounts (up to 90% off on-demand pricing) with the caveat that instances can be reclaimed with short notice...
Related Topics
- Cloud (3 terms in common)
- Infrastructure (3 terms in common)
- Hardware (3 terms in common)
- Ai (2 terms in common)
- Gpu (2 terms in common)
- Scaling Laws (1 terms in common)
- Cost (1 terms in common)
- Units (1 terms in common)
- Nvidia (1 terms in common)
- Performance (1 terms in common)
- Abstraction (1 terms in common)
- Distributed Systems (1 terms in common)
- Capacity (1 terms in common)
- Nodes (1 terms in common)
- Instances (1 terms in common)
- Resources (1 terms in common)