Supercomputers with extraordinary benchmark efficiencies running Microsoft's new operating system; customers anticipate evaluating Windows HPC Server 2008 release candidate. DRESDEN, Germany, June 18
DRESDEN, Germany, June 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today at the
International Supercomputing Conference, Microsoft Corp. 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.
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Key features that enable Windows HPC Server 2008 to efficiently scale to
thousands of cores include a new high-speed NetworkDirect RDMA, Microsoft's
new remote direct memory access interface, highly efficient and scalable
cluster management tools, a service-oriented architecture (SOA) job scheduler,
and cluster interoperability through standards such as the High Performance
Computing Basic Profile (HPCBP) specification produced by the Open Grid Forum
(OGF). At the show, Mellanox Technologies Inc. will demonstrate its new
ConnectX InfiniBand cards achieving 2 usec latency with 2 GB per second
throughput using the new NetworkDirect interface.
As Windows HPC Server 2008 prepares for its launch in the second half of
this year, early adopters of the new operating system already are seeing great
results. The NCSA used the beta version of Windows HPC Server 2008 to achieve
its 68.5 teraflops and 77.7 percent efficiency on 9,472 cores, making this
facility one of the most powerful supercomputing systems in the world and the
fastest Windows cluster to date.
"Our experience with Windows HPC Server 2008 has been impressive," said
Robert Pennington, deputy director of the NCSA. "Deploying it was much easier
than we expected, and the performance results have surpassed our expectations.
When we deployed Windows on our cluster, which has more than 1,000 nodes, we
went from bare metal to running the LINPACK benchmark programs in just four
hours. The performance of Windows HPC Server 2008 has yielded efficiencies
that are among the highest we've seen for this class of machine."
Similarly, computer scientists at Umea University in northern Sweden, also
working with the beta version of Windows HPC Server 2008 on their
supercluster, achieved 46 teraflops and 85.5 percent efficiency on 5,376
cores, making their system the second-largest Windows cluster ever deployed
and the fastest academic cluster in Sweden. Umea University will run the new
supercomputer at its facility known as HPC2N. The university's cluster employs
672 IBM blade servers, and also marks the first time that Windows HPC Server
2008 has been run publicly on IBM hardware.
"By working closely together on Windows HPC Server 2008, our customers are
already seeing improved efficiency rates," said Dave Jursik, vice president of
supercomputer sales for IBM Corp. "This industry partnership with Microsoft
plays a vital role in achieving our goal to create powerful cluster solutions
that address the growing needs of researchers such as the scientists at Umea."
NCSA and Umea University are just two of an increasing number of
supercomputing centers using Windows HPC Server 2008 that are on the TOP500
List with strong efficiency benchmarks. This list of the most powerful
computer systems in the world is published twice a year by the International
Supercomputing Conference. The list can be found at http://www.top500.org.
"The systems at Umea University and NSCA demonstrate that Windows can
scale to the rarefied atmosphere of the top 25 supercomputing systems in the
world -- which up to now have relied on dedicated, specialized hardware and
software," said Kyril Faenov, general manager of HPC at Microsoft.
High-Productivity Supercomputing
Microsoft's high-performance computing vision goes beyond tackling
traditional HPC workloads. Microsoft brings the value of an integrated,
turnkey HPC solution and a productive development environment to customers for
whom high-performance computing has been out of reach in the past. 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*.
"Microsoft has a history of taking niche technologies available only to a
small segment of the computing market and making them accessible and to be
used productively by large numbers of users," Faenov said. "That's our
strategy in the HPC space, where today users have to scour the Internet for
disparate technologies or get six or seven vendors to provide the various
pieces of a configuration. We have a complete solution for such customers, and
we're working with our ecosystem of partners to create a platform that they
can rely on."
Last fall Microsoft initiated a parallel computing initiative, a program
creating a set of common development tools across multicore desktops and
clusters with the goal of enabling parallelism for a broad set of commercial
applications. In addition, the company and Intel Corporation recently
announced a joint investment to create two new Universal Parallel Computing
Research Centers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, aimed at accelerating developments in
mainstream parallel computing.
More information on Windows HPC Server 2008 is available at
http://www.microsoft.com/hpc.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in
software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their
full potential.
* Source: Worldwide High-Performance and Technical Computing Server 2008.
2012 Forecast, #211500
SOURCE Microsoft Corp.
