Glossary

Account
A SLURM billing/association group used to authorize and track resource use. It can have limits that are stricter than cluster-wide maxima.

Allocation
The CPUs, memory, nodes, GPUs, and time reserved for a job.

Array job
A set of batch elements submitted from one array specification. Each element has a distinct array task ID but shares the initial resource request.

Array task ID
The index exposed as SLURM_ARRAY_TASK_ID; use it to select a stable manifest row.

Batch step
The job step that runs the batch script. Memory accounting such as MaxRSS may appear on the .batch row.

Concurrency cap
The %K portion of an array specification, such as 1-100%8, limiting simultaneous elements.

Dependency
A scheduler condition controlling when a job becomes eligible. afterok waits for successful upstream completion.

Exit code
The process status returned to the shell and SLURM. Zero conventionally means success; non-zero indicates failure or another application-defined condition.

Fan-out / fan-in
A workflow pattern that launches many independent tasks and then aggregates them in one downstream stage.

Job
A request submitted to SLURM containing resource requirements and commands.

Manifest
A table where each stable row defines one independent work unit, including its inputs, parameters, seed, and optional resource class.

MaxRSS
Maximum resident set size, commonly used as evidence of peak physical memory consumption for a task or job step.

Node
A physical computer in the cluster. Login nodes are shared for interaction; compute nodes run scheduled workloads.

Partition
A collection of nodes and policy limits, such as standard or debug.

Pending reason
The reason SLURM reports for a job that has not started, shown through %R in squeue or scontrol show job.

Resource class
A manifest label grouping tasks with similar CPU, memory, or walltime needs so they can be submitted with separate envelopes.

Scratch
High-performance temporary storage for active work. It is not an archive; check current backup and purge rules in the U-M Cluster Reference.

Task
Context-dependent: a scientific work unit, a SLURM task/process, or an array element. This guide says “work unit” when scientific meaning could be confused with --ntasks.

Thread
A concurrent execution path inside a process. A threaded program must be configured to match SLURM_CPUS_PER_TASK.

Walltime
The hard elapsed-time limit requested for a job, independent of total CPU time.