HPCwire: Cluster Computing Gets the Spotlight in Redmond

The Leading Source for Global News and Information Covering the Ecosystem of High Productivity Computing

HPCwire >> Blogs

Blog: From the Editor

June 09, 2006

Cluster Computing Gets the Spotlight in Redmond

As this issue was being published, Microsoft was getting ready to announce it's first production version of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS). After much anticipation, the company is finally releasing its cluster management offering. The actual announcement is a "release to manufacturing" which means the engineers at Redmond have signed off on the final version. No more betas, no more release candidates. This is it. For evaluation purposes, you should be able to download CCS from the company's website very soon, but you won't be able to purchase it until August.

CCS, designed as an extension of the Windows Server 2003, will provide a cluster management software platform for 64-bit x86 high performance computing systems. It will go up against established Linux-based solutions that now dominate HPC cluster systems worldwide.

The Linux competition will be tough, but Microsoft does have big two things in their favor: (1) Many organizations, both government and commercial, are already comfortably using Windows-based systems, everything from PCs to enterprise servers; and (2) As the largest software provider in the world, the company commands the resources to make things happen.

However, high performance computing is generally unfamiliar territory to Gates and company. Within the last year, they've managed to snag such notable HPC veterans as Tony Hey and Burton Smith, but most of Microsoft's expertise has grown up around PCs and, more recently, enterprise servers.

And because Microsoft came late to the party, rather then setting standards, the company has had to adapt to the existing HPC culture. For example, they incorporated both MPI and the Beowulf cluster model of computing into their product. In addition, they've partnered with some key cluster OEMs (HP, IBM and Dell), interconnect vendors (Myricom, Voltaire, Mellanox, and Silverstorm) and software vendors (Fluent, LSTC and MSC.Software) to make sure CCS is well supported in the HPC ecosystem.

Assuming the product generally works as expected, Microsoft should be able to pick a lot of low-hanging fruit in Windows dominated organizations that don't already have a lot of clusters deployed and are looking to scale out. CCS may also be able to compete against Linux solutions, where the end-users' workstations are Windows-based. In this environment, CCS will be able to provide a more seamless end-to-end solution.

Initially, the CCS may get the most traction in workgroup-sized clusters (less than $50K) or even smaller. In particular, it would seem to be a natural software platform for "personal supercomputers," often defined as systems under $10K. From the user's point of view, the conceptual difference between a personal computer and a personal supercomputer is rather small, so OEMs of these machines may find the Microsoft solution very attractive. In fact, Tyan's Typhoon personal supercomputers have already been demonstrated running under CCS.

To learn more about this new product, I talked to Kyril Faenov, Microsoft's director for High Performance Computing. Our feature article outlines the product's capabilities and provides Faenov's view on how it will fit into the HPC marketplace. The folks at Redmond seem to have done their homework. Here's the money quote from Faenov:

"Ultimately, the folks that we're talking to are focused on getting their work done. They just want to be able to run a core set of applications to get their results. They really don't particularly care what the underlying system is."

It'll be interesting to see how this unfolds over the next year.

Also in This Issue -- a Sterling Interview

If clusters are not your passion, catch the Thomas Sterling interview this week. Sterling, along with Don Becker, developed the original Beowulf cluster computing model, but now confines his interests mainly to high-end supercomputing technologies. Contributing editor, Chris Lazou caught up with him at the NEC User Group meeting last month in Toronto. The resulting interview is one of the best in HPCwire this year.

Lazou and Sterling discussed many interesting topics: silicon technologies, optical computing, federal funding of HPC, DARPA's HPCS program, Petaflop computing and Sterling's own research work. I thought the most interesting exchange was when Lazou brought up the need for new HPC languages and the chicken-and-egg problem of getting software vendors to support them. Here's what Sterling had to say:

"Every language was a new language at one time. Most are not accepted by the mainstream. Some are adopted for niche applications. Very few have a major impact. The thing to remember is that over the next sixty years (the length of all electronic computing to date), we will write many times as much software than already exists today. The true legacy code is our future not our past."

I hope someone at the DARPA HPCS office is listening.

-----

As always, comments about HPCwire are welcomed and encouraged. Write to me, Michael Feldman, at editor@hpcwire.com.

Posted by Michael Feldman - June 9 @ 12:00AM

(Digg, Technorati, more)

Discussion

There are 0 discussion items posted.

Join the Discussion

You must be a registered user in order to comment on HPCwire stories.

Members enjoy:

	Access to Special Content, including Podcasts, Webcasts, and Whitepapers and more!
	Ability to take an active role in the discussions that are shaping the HPC technology discipline!
	Special offers available only to HPCwire members!

Become a Registered User Today!

Registered Users Log in Here to Comment

Email Address:	Password (case sensitive)

Remember me	Forgot Password?

Michael Feldman

Michael Feldman is the editor of HPCwire.

More Michael Feldman

Feature Articles

The Week in Review

C-DAC announces plans for a petaflop system; IBM researchers are working on vertical integration techniques to extend Moore's Law another 15 years. We recap those stories and more in our weekly wrapup.
Read More...

Moscow State University Supercomputer Has Petaflop Aspirations

The Moscow State University supercomputer, Lomonosov, has been selected for a high-performance makeover, with the goal of tripling its processing power to achieve petaflop-level performance in 2010. T-Platforms, who developed and manufactured the supercomputer, is the odds-on favorite to lead the project.
Read More...

Intel Ups Performance Ante with Westmere Server Chips

Right on schedule, Intel has launched its Xeon 5600 processors, codenamed "Westmere EP." The 5600 represents the 32nm sequel to the Xeon 5500 (Nehalem EP) for dual-socket servers. Intel is touting better performance and energy efficiency, along with new security features, as the big selling points of the new Xeons.
Read More...

Read more HPCwire features...

Top Headlines

Intel Partners See 'Easy' Upgrade Path With Xeon 5600 Chips

Mar 18 | ChannelWeb | Westmere parts already showing up in HPC machines. Read more...

AMD: OEMs primed for Opteron 6100s

Mar 17 | The Register | But what about the tier ones? Read more...

Arrival of the Desktop Supercomputer

Mar 17 | Cadalyst Magazine | A new generation of workstations is changing the nature of technical computing. Read more...

Scheduling HPC In The Cloud

Mar 17 | Linux Magazine | Latest iteration of Sun Grid Engine able to tap into Cloud. Read more...

Tailoring Medicine with Supercomputers

Mar 16 | Bio-IT World | Biotech firm builds genetic models from patient data. Read more...

Read more headlines...

Featured Whitepapers

Virtualization for Aggregation And The vSMP Architecture™

Jan 12 | | In-depth look at vSMP Foundation server virtualization technology, technical implementation, use cases and capabilities. The technical whitepaper provides an architectural overview and details on the three vSMP Foundation products: vSMP Foundation for SMP, vSMP Foundation for Cluster and vSMP Foundation for Cloud.

Copper Cable Technologies for High Performance Computing

Jan 18 | | This white paper discusses Gore’s copper cable assemblies, and how they continue to exceed the standards for providing reliable, cost-effective solutions for high-performance computer applications.

View the White Paper Library

Multimedia

Webcast: Virtualized Data Center Roundtable

Join this online panel discussion for live Q&A with leading industry experts, analysts, and end-users to discuss the latest innovations, best practices, barriers to implementation, and measurable benefits of server virtualization with a particular focus on today's real world solutions.

Webcast: Watch SC09 Birds of a Feather Video: Scalable Fault-Tolerant HPC Supercomputers

Learn about scalable fault-tolerant architectures and examples of energy efficient and scalable supercomputing clusters using dual QDR InfiniBand to combine capacity computing with network failover capabilities with the help of programming languages such as MPI and a robust Linux cluster management package.

Webcast: High Performance Computing for a Smarter Planet

LIVE@SCO9: The IBM team discusses new innovations in hardware, software and services that help clients better understand their workloads and get insight from their R&D efforts. Technology demonstrations include the soon-to-be-released Power7 HPC processor, the DCS990 system with 2.4 petabytes of storage, the xCAT management tool, secure HPC cloud computing and more. Winners of two HPCwire Readers' and Editors’ Choice Awards! Take the IBM virtual tour at SC09 or more information go online to: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/deepcomputing/sc09.html