Microsoft releases Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 3 August, 2006 By Dave Chappelle

PromoPipeline Exclusive Channel Promotions Find Out How You Can Make Money Today! ENROLL FREE! >> Underpromising William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Services: I Can See Clearly Now Beth Vanni - Amazon Consulting Cutting the margin so many times William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels The Sign of Success - High Maintenance William Vanderbilt - Innovative Learning Channels Question for the Times: Build or Resell? Gary Bixler - AMD

Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 is focused on scaling computationally intensive applications by utilizing multiple servers in a cost-effective and easy to manage fashion. It is designed to provide customers with a simplified deployment and management experience, offers easy integration with existing Windows infrastructures, and enables customers to leverage their existing development skills using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

"With this announcement, Microsoft aims to make high-performance computing (HPC) cluster technology more mainstream by bringing the cost advantages, ease of use and partner ecosystem of the Microsoft Windows Server platform to commercial industry and the public sector," said Hilary Wittmann, Product Manager for Windows Server, Microsoft Canada.

"Microsoft has also made a multiyear, multimillion-dollar investment in joint projects at academic institutions to help guide ongoing software research and product innovation at Microsoft to address the most challenging technical computing problems."

Advances in computing hardware technology, such as multi-core processors, standards-based, high-speed interconnects and ubiquitous x64 (64-bit x86 architecture), are driving more organizations to look for ways to implement High Performance Computing (HPC) software solutions.

"HPC software enables organizations to push hardware to its limits, and delivers value by helping to replace or supplement live, physical experiments with computer-simulated modeling, tests and analysis," said Wittman.

"HPC is key for industries tasked with solving scaled-out business and scientific computational problems. Our strategy to take High-Performance Computing mainstream is based on partner involvement. We've partnered with strategic vendors who offer solutions for High-Performance Computing to include leading application vendors, OEMs and independent hardware vendors."

Currently, the product is available via volume licensing and original equipment manufacturing licensing.

"Via Microsoft's collaboration with the HPC community and strategic partners, Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 will deliver a more mainstream way for engineers, scientists and researchers to solve scaled-out business and scientific computational problems," Wittman said.

"This collaboration is designed to meet our customer's unique needs by enabling them to choose among and run a variety of compatible HPC applications."

In the past, cost and complexity have made HPC an option for only wealthy organizations with abundant IT resources.

"We believe that cost and complexity shouldn't be barriers to innovation and discovery," said Wittman.

"The launch of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 is an initiative to extend the benefits of HPC to a larger audience. Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 accelerates our customer's time to insight by providing a reliable, HPC platform that is simple to deploy, operate, and integrate with existing infrastructure and tools."

The solution has been used by early-adopter customers for oil and gas reservoir simulation and seismic processing, by life sciences customers for simulations of enzyme catalysis and protein folding, and by manufacturing customers for vehicle design and safety improvements.

Early-adopter customers include AREVA-Challenge (France), BAE Systems, CASPUR (Italy), Cornell University's Computational Biology Service Unit, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Northrop Grumman Corp., Petrobras (Brazil), Queen's University of Belfast (U.K.), Tokyo Institute of Technology's Global Scientific Information and Computing Center, the University of Cincinnati's Genome Research Institute and Virginia Tech's Computational Bioinformatics, and Bioimaging Laboratory.

"We want HPC technology to become a pervasive resource and we are excited about the promise this holds for our customers and partners in the months and years ahead," said Wittman.