When people talk about "high performance computing" or HPC, they're generally talking about supercomputing. Supercomputers are different to computing grids: where grids link computers that are distributed around an institution, country or the world, supercomputers are one giant computer in a single room.

Supercomputers generally deal with computer-centric problems; the secret to solving these probems is "teraflops": as many as possible.

Grid computing allows large computational resources to be combined, helping scientists to tackle problems that cannot be solved on a single system, or to solve problems much more quickly.

Examples of these supercomputing grids are DEISA in Europe or TeraGrid in the U.S.

Typical HPC grid applications include:

• astrophysics (e.g., simulations of a supernova explosion or black hole collision)
• automotive/aerospace industry (e.g., simulations of a car crash or a new airplane design)
• climate modeling (e.g., simulations of a tornado or climate prediction)
• economics (e.g., modeling the world economy)