Compute

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What Does Compute Mean?

Compute, in modern computing, refers to activities, applications or workloads that require more processing resources than its memory or I/O resource requirements. Generally speaking, compute is used to describe concepts and objects geared towards computation and processing. For example, CPUs, APUs and GPUs are considered compute resources while graphics processing applications like 3-D rendering and video games are described as compute-intensive applications.

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Techopedia Explains Compute

Compute is frequently encountered in modern computing concepts like cloud computing and big data, used to refer to resources being used or served up in the server and data center spaces. In utility computing as in cloud computing and big data, resources that are used to process data are called compute resources that are provided by CPUs working together in clusters. Compute resources are essentially time slice tickets given to those clients that need it so that they can have access to the allocated CPUs in the system.

The partners of compute resource are memory resource, storage resource, network resource and I/O resource. All computing activities need a combination of the above with compute being one of the most important and omnipresent in any activity.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ??a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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