Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog : supercomputing

Microsoft Breaks Into Top 10 of World's Most Powerful Supercomputers

grantkd — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Today at the Supercomputing 2008 conference, Microsoft Corp. debuted in the top 10 of the world's most powerful supercomputers with Shanghai Supercomputer Center and Dawning Information Industry Co. Ltd., which ranked at No. 10 with 180.6 teraflops, the parallel computing speed, and 77.5 percent .efficiency. A truly incredible achievement considering that 12 months ago in Reno, Nevada, Microsoft was at 116 on the Top500 list at Top500.org. This is on the heels of Windows HPC Server 2008 releasing to the manufacturing industry in September.

For more information, please visit the Windows Server Division Weblog.

Microsoft and Cray team up to drive High Productivity Computing into the Mainstream

grantkd — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:49:00 GMT

Cray CX1 Supercomputer with Windows HPC Server 2008 and Intel Xeon Processors Starts At $25,000 and Provides "Ease-of-Everything" For New Users of HPC

Today Cray Inc. and Microsoft are teaming for the first time to announce a compact supercomputer, the Cray CX1 pre-installed with Windows HPC Server 2008. With U.S. list prices starting at $25,000 to over $60,000, "ease-of-everything" features and the ability to fit into standard office environments and workflows, the new product reflects Microsoft and Cray's shared goal to drive high productivity computing farther into the mainstream in a broad array of markets including financial services, aerospace, automotive, petroleum, life sciences, government, academic and digital media.

For more information about today’s announcement please visit the Windows Server Division Blog.

Windows HPC Server Debuts in Top 25 at ISC

grantkd — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:17:00 GMT

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:

Press Release: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/jun08/06-18HPCServerPR.mspx
Windows Server Team Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/
Port 25: http://port25.technet.com/
VolkerW's WebLog: http://blogs.msdn.com/volkerw/
IBM Press Release: http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24478.wss
Windows HPC Server Website: http://www.microsoft.com/hpc