The CDCPC is used in large part to run parallel programs which employ techniques established to run distributed programs on networks of workstations. The CDCPC differs from traditional networks of workstations in 2 major ways: First, the interconnection network is a high-performance crossbar switch more like the inter-processor connections of a supercomputer rather than a bus-based ethernet. Second, the workstations in the CDCPC are dedicated to running large jobs in parallel; the processors and network do not have Xservers, mail, news, and NFS traffic consuming system resources. The combination of these two factors allow the CDCPC to undertake more aggressive distributed programming techniques than would be used on a collection of individual workstations a on a LAN.

The CDCPC provides the user with a total of 3 Gigabytes of RAM, 40 Gigabytes of disk, 1.6 Gigabits/second of interconnection network bandwidth, and more than 7000 SpecFP 92 of floating point performance.

Related research projects include the Clemson Beowulf Cluster, Parallel Virtual File System (PVFS), Problem Solving Environments, and the Clemson Regional Data Center.