News
Microsoft Releases Beta Version of its High-Performance Computing OS
- By Matthew Schwartz, Enterprise Systems
- November 16, 2005
At a keynote speech to Supercomputing 2005, Microsoft’s Bill Gates said
Microsoft has released the beta 2 version of Windows Compute Cluster Server
2003, the company’s first high-performance computing OS, and is funding
joint research projects at 10 academic centers worldwide.
In addition to computational modeling and clusters, Gates addressed the transformation
resulting from the availability of massive amounts of real-world data from low-cost
sensors. This powerful combination creates new opportunities, but also new challenges,
particularly with how to manage, search, analyze and publish that data and the
resulting conclusions, he said.
Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 is scheduled for release in the
first half of 2006. The company is working with software partners across the
manufacturing, life sciences and geosciences, and other industries to create
apps for the new OS. This effort includes integrating applications with the
Microsoft Message Passing Interface and the Microsoft job scheduler, and offering
performance-tuning technologies to run on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.
Microsoft also is working with Intel to provide software vendors with 64-bit
hardware, software and tools from both companies, and joint on-site engineering
assistance.
Gates said Microsoft has made multiyear, multimillion-dollar investments in
joint research projects at high-performance computing centers at universities
in the United States, Russia, Japan, England and Germany.