Book excerpt: High Performance Computing Demystified provides an overview of high performance resources and their applications across many disciplines. This book is organized into five parts encompassing 16 chapters that cover the principles, mode of operation, and practical aspects of supercomputers. The first and second parts provide a brief history of high performance computing and describe the "basic parts needed to build high performance computers, including high performance microprocessors and network topologies. The third part examines the features of multiprocessor architectures of high performance, such as the large number crunchers, massively parallel processing machines, and networks of workstations. The fourth part deals with the software paradigms for high performance, while the fifth part looks into the high performance computing resources that are available to the public, with some guide to accessing those resources. This book is intended primarily for engineers and business managers who have a basic understanding of computers and would like to learn about high performance computing.