The Windows HPC Team Blog : University of Southampton

CCS battles Climate Change

MichaelCole — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:47:00 GMT

posted Wednesday, June 20, 2007 2:52 PM by ktakeda | 0 Comments

Read about the Southampton Institute's work on a unified earth systems modelling system. Combining the power of CCS, Windows Workflow Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation and SQL Server 2005, environmental scientists are now able to carry out experiments that they weren't even dreaming about a few years ago.

Read the full case study here...

Computer Cluster User Group Meeting Success

MichaelCole — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 13:54:00 GMT

posted Saturday, April 28, 2007 2:40 PM by ktakeda | 0 Comments

Thanks to the 70+ participants for making the world's first CCS User Group meeting at Microsoft UK HQ such a success. An amazing 95% turnout, which is unheard of for such a gathering, especially for a sunny Friday! Simon Cox, of the Southampton Institute for HPC, hosted the show, which covered everything from financial applications, real-world grid deployment, to improving reliability of aircraft engines, and Excel on CCS.

Special thank sto Gordon Frazer, MD of Microsoft UK, for spending time with us and fielding a host of interesting quesrtions on CCS, Vista and all things Microsoft. The assembled crowd of users, OEMs and ISVs certainly didn't give him an easy time!

Of great interest was the discussion on CCS version 2, led by Ryan Waite and John Vert, who flew out to the UK from Redmond. Also thanks to Jeff Wierer for enlightening us on the world of High performance Excel Services - fascinating!

For a couple of pics of the event, check out Mike Pallot's HPC & Search Blog here.

Stay posted here for more community activity as it evolves :)

Aircraft design simulation becomes supercharged...

MichaelCole — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:55:00 GMT

posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:39 AM by ktakeda | 0 Comments

Today sees the announcement of a £17.4m CFMS UK project to enhance computer simulation productivity in aerospace, motorsports and marine sectors. The Southampton Institute for HPC is a partner, working with Microsoft to develop key architecture, tools and technologies to radically improve the engineering experience.

The consortium is led by Airbus and includes the Aircraft Research Association, BAE Systems, BMT Fluid Mechanics Limited, Eurostep, Frazer-Nash Consultancy (representing DML Group), Hewlett-Packard, IT Innovation, MBDA, Microsoft, PCA Engineers, Quadrics, QinetiQ, Rolls-Royce, AgustaWestland, Williams F1 and University of Southampton.

Read the full press release @ http://www.gnn.gov.uk/Content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=263399&NewsAreaID=2

Sun, Sea, and Supercomputers

MichaelCole — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 14:30:00 GMT

posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:16 AM by ktakeda | 0 Comments

Another November, another Supercomputing conference (SC'06). This year we were in Tampa, Florida, a nice change from grey and rainy Southampton. It certainly was hot, in the 80s Fahrenheit, but the thunderstorms are pretty torrential too!

We were honoured to be part of the huge Microsoft stand again, which is very exciting as Windows Compute Cluster Server is now a real product. Two of our videos were running on the big Plasma screen in between booth talks. The folks opposite on the Pacific Nortwest Labs stand now know more than they ever wanted to about our BAE Systems CFD project, and the Smallpeice Trust 'Computers in Engineering' course we ran in July!

This year our demo was pretty cool, pushing the .NET 3 Framework, using Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, and Globus 2 accessing Windows Compute Cluster. We were performing whole Earth System simulations (atmosphere + ocean) to investigate scenarios of the Gulf Stream switching on and off. Running all of this from inside a web browser, with WPF, was one of the first times anyone had seen such Web 2.0 technology being used in anger - even the Microsoft folks ;)

I'll post more about the demo on our MIHPC site (www.mihpc.net) soon!

My colleague, Simon Cox, had some fun cruising around Tampa showing how supercomputing affects our everyday lives. Check out the video at www.winhpc.org .

posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:38 AM by ktakeda | 0 Comments

Bright sparks in Brussels - EU Innovation Day

Well, November 9th was an interesting day... A quick trip to Brussels to the Microsoft Executive Briefing Centre for the Microsoft Research EU Innovation Day 2006. These have been running for a few years now, and it is an opportunity for Microsoft to show off all of the funky research they are doing in Europe and around the world!

This year we were invited to showcase the work we're doing in the Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing (www.mihpc.net).

There were lots of people rushing around, as not only was Bill Gates coming to give a keynote speech, but so was the EU President, Matti Vanhanen. Their speeches were very interesting, discussing why innovation in Europe is not as fruitful as in other regions, and what can be done to help.

The exhibition was fascinating, you can read more about it on the website...
http://www.euinnovationday.com/

For piccies of the event, go straight here... http://www.eventattitude.net/innovationday

posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:34 AM by ktakeda | 0 Comments

Windows Workflow Foundation details...

If you want to see how Windows Workflow Foundation can be used for technical computing, then you can read the Southampton Institute's paper entitled 'Leveraging Windows Workflow Foundation for Scientific Workflows in Wind Tunnel Applications' here...

http://www.soton.ac.uk/~ktakeda/downloads/SciFlow06PersonalUse.pdf

Find out more about Windows Workflow Foundation here...

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa663328.aspx

And keep up to date with Paul Andrew's blog @ http://blogs.msdn.com/pandrew/default.aspx

posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:31 AM by ktakeda | 0 Comments

Southampton Institute poster gallery

Find out more about what's happening at the Southampton Institute for HPC by downloading our posters @ http://www.soton.ac.uk/ses/research/mshpci/posters.html

posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:28 AM by ktakeda | 0 Comments

Supercomputing is child's play

Can you build a Windows supercomputer from parts and run a parallel Fluent CFD calculation for an airliner in a day?

The HPC Institute at Southampton set this challenge to a dozen 17 year olds, and they did it! Not only that, they flew their designs in Microsoft Flight Simulator too :)

See the video to find out more:

http://www.soton.ac.uk/~ktakeda/temp/2305_Smallpeice_Trust_02.10.06.wmv

This residential course at Southampton was run by the Smallpeice Trust, and was sponsored by Microsoft Research Cambridge. Powered by Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, of course!