Today at International Supercomputing in Dresden, Germany Microsoft debuted in the top 25 of the world’s top 500 largest supercomputers with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), which ranked at No. 23 with 68.5 teraflops.

 

The company also announced that the release candidate version of Windows HPC Server 2008 will be available for download in the last week of June.

 

Key features of Windows HPC Server 2008 include:

  • high-speed networking,
  • efficient and scalable cluster management tools,
  • advanced failover capabilities,
  • a service-oriented architecture (SOA) job scheduler, and
  • support for clustered file systems from some of Microsoft partners.

Microsoft’s high-performance computing vision goes beyond tackling traditional HPC workloads. By focusing on productivity for users, developers and administrators, Microsoft is positioned to lead the growth of HPC. According to IDC, over the next five years the HPC server market is projected to show healthy, steady growth. IDC expects revenue for the total HPC server market to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 9.2 percent to reach $18 billion by 2012.

 

More information on today’s announcements can be found here: