Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Windows HPC hits top 10 among supercomputers

November 19, 2008 12:00 PM ET

Network World - Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday hit another high-performance computing (HPC) milestone by placing its server for the first time in the top 10 on the list of the Top 500 super computers as judged by Top500.org.

Just a year ago, the best Microsoft could do was 116th place based on rankings from Top500.org, which has been benchmarking supercomputers since 1993 with its bi-annual tests it calls "runs."

Windows HPC Server 2008, a 64-bit system that shipped Nov. 1, came in at No. 10, achieving 180.6 teraflops with 77.5% efficiency at the Shanghai Supercomputer Center and Dawning Information Industry Corp. A teraflops is a trillion floating-point operations per second.

Despite the high ranking, Microsoft's biggest high-performance computing challenge -- creating easy-to-use developer tools for writing applications for the platform -- is likely ahead of it.

The company's HPC strategy is to cut the cost and complexity of HPC, and surrounding its system with Microsoft's collection of applications, management wares, development tools and the independent software vendor community.

Microsoft currently lays claim to less than 5% of HPC server market revenue, according to market research firm IDC. Those numbers compare with 74% for Linux and just over 21% for Unix variants.

In addition, competitors such as Red Hat Inc. have been offering its Enterprise Linux for HPC Compute Nodes since last year. IBM is also in the mix, and Sun late last year re-entered the HPC fray with its Constellation System.

The next major milestone for Microsoft will come in the next year when it releases Visual Studio 2010, which was introduced last month at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and includes features that make it easier to design for parallel computing.

"The importance that development tools play in all of this can't be overestimated," says Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT Inc. "The money and the effort Microsoft is putting into developing Visual Studio and other tools is really critical to making this work. Clustered systems have been around for a while, but one reason Linux has been such a popular platform is due to the complexity of writing for parallel environments. The easy customization of Linux allowed people in the know to get in there and design, build and tweak the system to maximize performance."

One of the HPC-related features coming in Visual Studio 2010 is .Net Parallel Extensions, which is designed to exempt developers from having to have specialized knowledge to write parallel code. Also included for transitioning to parallel code are Task Parallel Library, Parallel LINQ and Coordination Data Structures for managed code.

Microsoft also released a preview last month of its F# language, which is a specialty language that will help developers to easily write parallel code.


Reprinted with permission from

For more information about enterprise networking, go to NetworkWorld.com
Story copyright 2009 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved.

Jump to comments

Microsoft

Additional Resources

Xerox
By using solid ink technology only from Xerox, you could save up to 65% by printing color for the cost of black and white. Enter for a chance to WIN a PhaserTM 8860 network color printer!
Microsoft
Save time and mitigate security risk. Deploy it now.
Sybase
In this white paper, IDC analyzes the role of next-generation mobile enterprise platforms as organizations seek a more strategic deployment of mobile solutions.

Learn the important issues you must consider before starting your next mobility initiative. Get your mobility white paper from IDC now, compliments of Sybase.

What People Are Saying

White Papers & Webcasts

Batch Job Scheduling beyond a Single OS Instance
Download this resource now!  

Effectively Implementing Datacenter Automation
Effectively select and deploy the best datacenter automation solution today!

The Power/Density Paradox: The Result of High Density without Power Efficiency
Download this brief to explore what the power/density paradox is and how IT professionals can mitigate the risk.  

XenApp Extends Virtualized Application Delivery
Download this webcast to learn how to accelerate delivery of virtualized applications and streamline management.

If It's Just a Disk...Why the Reliability Gap Between Storage Vendors?
If all storage array vendors buy disk drives from the same small set of disk manufacturers then why is there such a big...  

No More Tiers: Reduce Storage Costs with an Age-in-Place Strategy
Download this whitepaper to discover the easiest and most cost effective way to manage the life-cycle of your data.  

Top HPC Use Cases in Life Sciences
Learn from the experts how best to apply cutting edge high-performance computing techniques a life sciences environment.

A Process-based Approach to Protecting Privileged Accounts & Meeting Regulatory Compliance
Download this complimentary white paper today! Provided by BeyondTrust.  

2 Minutes to IT workload automation
Download this Complimentary Video! Sponsored by BMC Software.