Microsoft has launched an effort to produce a version of Windows for high-performance computing, a move seen as a direct attack on a Linux stronghold.High-performance computing once required massive, expensive, exotic machines from companies such as Cray, but the field is being remade by the arrival of clusters of low-end machines. While the trend could be considered an opportunity for Microsoft, which has long been the leading operating-system company, Linux has actually become the favored software used on these clusters.
Now Microsoft has begun its response, forming its High Performance Computing team and planning a new OS version called Windows Server HPC Edition. Kyril Faenov is director of the effort, and Microsoft is hiring new managers, programmers, testers and others.
The Redmond, Wash.-based software colossus has its work cut out in the market–and knows it.
Microsoft creating Windows for supercomputers
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One response to “Microsoft creating Windows for supercomputers”
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re: Microsoft creating Windows for supercomputers
A number of us on the Beowulf list got spammed by a company claiming to be doing market research on behalf of Microsoft, but SpamAssassin picked it up and appropriately marked it as such.
I suspect it was legitimate, and MS has been making noises about this for some time, but I think the main problem will be persuading some of the ISV’s to port their code, especially in an area where MS will not be (initially) dominant.
That said, there were at least two MS Windows clusters in the Top-500 last November (see http http://www.top500.org/list/2003/11/ and search for Windows).
Chris
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