In The Works: Windows For Supercomputers

Robert Accettura writes "According to ZDNet, Microsoft may be feeling threatened by Linux gaining ground in the High Performance Computing (HPC) arena. As a result, they have formed a HPC group to bring windows to these systems. It makes a mention of how clustered computing may be a target. I guess the only thing better than crashing 1 computer at a time is crashing an entire room full at once."

Comments

I guess Bill thinks it's time...

[Mike Buddha]

I guess Bill thinks it's time to slow the worlds fastest computers to a crawl. Apparently they aren't crashing enough, too.

Field day for the worms

[troon]

I hope those guys have good firewalls.

Obligatory clippy comment

[foidulus]

"It looks like you are building a cluster, would you like me to tell you how Microsoft can bring it to it's knees?"

hijack ware

[wpiman]

Great- when the cluster gets hijacked by spyware and the like- it can send out 3 millions spam emails a hour as opposed to the 5000 a Dell does now.

Windows HPC

[LittleBigLui]

Because every Node needs a Windowing System in Ring 0.

WIndows for clusters

[miquels]

.. codename "domino" ?

Crashing

[Andy Smith]

I guess the only thing better than crashing 1 computer at a time is crashing an entire room full at once

Yeah because Windows crashes all the time for me. Oh yes, every day. Every hour!

Oh no, hang on, it doesn't. Ever. I boot up in the morning, switch between video and photo editing software hundreds of times throughout the day with regular use of MSIE and Eudora as well, and then I shut it down at night without it having crashed once. Every day. For years.

Old versions of Windows crashed a lot. Current versions don't. Fact.

This is part of the reason why Linux isn't gaining mainstream acceptance fast enough. Linux advocates talk about all these imaginary flaws in Windows and people out here in the real world think "well that isn't my experience at all". The effect is to create a distance between regular people and Linux advocates, which in turn pushes the mainstream acceptance of Linux further and further away. Linux needs to be seen as "the other big operating system", not some niche software used by a minority who seem to have a totally different experience of Windows than the rest of us.

Re:nah, just a PR move.

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean, Windows doesn't cluster? Of course it clusters! In fact, Microsoft go to great lengths to tell you how to cluster your Microsoft Windows Server to achieve the best performance. There's the:

• Primary Domain Controller
• Secondary Domain Controller
• A backup Secondary Domain Controller (In case the first one fails)
• The Exchange Server
• The second Exchange Server (Because the first can't handle the load
• The backup Exchange Server (In case one of the two primary Exchange Servers fails)
• The IIS Server..
• The fallover IIS Server..
• The fallover fallover IIS Server
• The MS SQL Server
• The MS SQL Server backup
• Two or more file servers
• The Backup server, running Arcserve or similiar (Because even an MCSE can tell you NT Backup is utter turd)
• The Active Directory Server
• The backup Active Directory Server
• 
  See? All those computers in multiple clusters. Microsoft are always ahead of the game!

Windows on a Supercomputer/Mainframe

[BigBlockMopar]

I love this whole idea of Windows on a supercomputer! Just think of how fast a spam drone it would make!

Windows only technical asset is a (relatively) good GUI.

And, as we all know, *ALL* mainframes, supercomputers and servers absolutely must have GUIs!

After all,

• GUIs are less resource-intensive than a CLI (but why would you care, having invested millions to get a couple of teraflops, about squeezing every last little drop of power out of it?)
• GUIs save you time and effort! Rather than a simple shell, Perl, $whatever script to do things, have an operator point-and-click for that human touch!
• GUIs, by virtue of being based on less code and with less features than a CLI, are inherently more secure. Microsoft, as we know, is the field's foremost expert in security and reliability.

Memo at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory:

"Please be advised that Deep Blue will be rebooted this afternoon at 5:PM in order to complete the installation of Service Pack 11. All jobs currently running and queued will be lost, even those which have already accumulated several years of processor time. We expect Deep Blue to resume normal operation sometime in early August. Thank you for your cooperation, LANL Informatics Department"