Hah, fair enough, HPC clusters are certainly more common than when I went to school. In that case, take the "like" to be a generalization (how I meant it): A student (or students) pushing the limits of the existing rules and infrastructure to accomplish something productive or interesting. Yes, it breaks some rules, but what's a typical reaction anymore? Do they get hired by the university or pushed to work with particular researchers like when I was starting school or do they get pushed out or punished like when I was wrapping up college?

Today the sysadmin sends you a frustrated email at you asking you not to do that again. You are using someone else's stuff that is carefully maintained by other people, it's polite to abide by the rules these maintainers have set up since it's their job and their free time on the line when things go wrong.

Not even that. You can reach those kinds of levels with a GPU these days (and GPU programming is sufficiently obscure that most people won't even attempt to go that route).

Though... with the whole GPU shortage going on right now, maybe it'd be easier to steal computer time from someone else's lab right now!!