Thin clients

Thin client

— PCs designed to work in conjunction with an external server and often not designed to function offline at all. The main function of a thin client is the input and output of information: through such a computer, the user sets the initial data, sends them to the server for processing, and upon completion of the calculations, receives the results. And in some models, even the operating system, when turned on, is loaded from the server, and not from its own drive. Thus, load distribution is ensured: a powerful external computer performs calculations, and a thin client can be made small, compact and inexpensive — it does not require advanced hardware. A PC of this type is unlikely to be useful to an ordinary user, but thin clients are indispensable in powerful computing systems that use supercomputers to process large amounts of data.