|
contents | software | |||||||
| Microsoft Releases the First Public Beta of Windows HPC Server 2008 Microsoft has released the first public beta of Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008, a server operating system and tools designed for the fast-growing high-performance computing market. Microsoft has also established the Parallel Computing Initiative, a program creating a set of common development tools across multicore desktops and clusters. Windows HPC Server 2008, the successor to Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, is based on the Windows Server 2008 operating system and is designed to increase productivity, scalability and manageability. Windows HPC Server 2008 has been renamed to reflect its readiness to tackle the most challenging HPC workloads. Key features are new high-speed networking, highly efficient and scalable cluster management tools, advanced failover capabilities, a service oriented architecture job scheduler, and support for partners' clustered file systems. The beta is now available for download atthis page; the final version will be generally available in the second half of 2008. Microsoft is also showcasing the ways cluster administrators, end users and developers can increase productivity with a common set of tools that span the desktop and cluster. Cluster administrators can save time with Microsoft System Center for application-level monitoring and rapid provisioning and SQL Server Reporting Services for capacity planning and auditing. End users can save time with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for data collaboration and the Windows Workflow Foundation for automating processes across workgroups. Mixed, dual-boot clusters can also improve cluster efficiency. Because dual-boot clusters flexibly serve both Linux and Windows users, they increase utilization rates by expanding their number of addressable users. Examples of customers deploying large mixed clusters include the University of Iowa, Cambridge University, 3M and Baker Hughes Leading technology partners that have announced mixed cluster support for Windows HPC Server 2008 include Altair Engineering, Cluster Resources and Platform Computing. Clustered file system vendors that have announced support for Windows include Panasas, Quantum's StorNext, HP PolyServe, and Sanbolic, and IBM has plans to support IBM GPFS on Windows. Deepening its investment in developer productivity, Microsoft has also created the Parallel Computing Initiative, which encompasses the vision, strategy and innovative developments in systems, runtimes, programming models, libraries, language extensions, and development tools across desktop and cluster. Designed to simplify and enable parallelism for a broad set of commercial applications in the multicore and cluster environments, this initiative adds to currently available standards-based tools such as Message Passing Interface and OpenMP and native parallel debugger support in Visual Studio 2007. New technologies include the Parallel Extensions to the .NET Framework that will enable developers to express parallelism and improve efficiency and scalability of parallel applications. Over the next six months, Microsoft will ship customer technology previews of this technology. Demonstrating how Microsoft's investment into parallel programming is expanding the high-performance computing market, market leaders in the actuarial insurance software market, such as Milliman and Towers Perrin, have already announced native support for Windows HPC, introducing a large new segment of performance-sensitive customers to the benefits of parallelism. write your comments about the article :: © 2007 Networking News :: home page |