Microsoft updates supercomputing platform

Software giant aims for 'broad uptake' of Windows HPC Server 2008 R2

HPC systems can be used to model climate change

Microsoft announced an update to its High Performance Computing (HPC) Server 2008 platform at the HPC Financial Markets Conference in New York yesterday.

HPC systems are used to address complex compute challenges, such as climate change simulations, weather forecasting, drug design, and financial risk modelling.

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 is designed to make better use of cloud computing platforms and parallel processing hardware for HPC applications.

Microsoft UK HPC product manager Michael Newberry said: "Our aim with the new server compute platform is to provide the tools, platforms and services so that more people can more easily harness the scale and efficiency of parallel computing across client, cluster and cloud."

The platform's new features include spreadsheet integration through HPC Services for Excel 2010, and the ability to integrate with Windows 7-based systems, allowing firms to use any spare processor time for number crunching.

Integration with Active Directory authentication enables IT teams to control exactly who has access to these resources, although HPC Server 2008 R2 cannot pass workloads onto XP, Vista or Linux systems.

Microsoft said HPC Server 2008 R2 can be used to create a 1,000 node cluster right after the system is installed.

Microsoft listed Intel and Nvidia as hardware partners that helped to develop the operating system to manage parallel processing of computing operations.

Overall, the company believes that HPC Server will allow administrators to easily deploy and manage HPC clusters at costs equal to or better than Linux HPC systems.

Newberry said Microsoft would soon be releasing an update to HPC Server 2008 R2 and that this would allow customers to provision and manage HPC nodes in Windows Azure from within on-premises server clusters.

Microsoft has not yet managed to gain significant share in the HPC market.

The June 2010 list of top HPC computers generated by The Top 500 Supercomputer Sites web site, showed Microsoft’s HPC system installed on just one per cent of HPC systems.