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Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 Released
grammar fascist writes "According to an Information Week article, on Friday Microsoft released Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003." From the article: "The software is Microsoft's first to run parallel HPC applications aimed at users working on complex computations... 'High-performance computing technology holds great potential for expanding opportunities... but until now it has been too expensive and too difficult for many people to use effectively,' said Bob Muglia, senior vice president of [Microsoft's] Server and Tools Business unit, in a statement."
It takes some serious marketing balls (and/or or a lack of marketing brains) to release a product branded "2003" when we're already halfway through 2006.
:)
I actually have to applaud the naming move; it accurately lets everybody know that this product is based on Windows Server 2003. It would have been quite misleading if they'd passed it off as " Windows Compute Cluster Server 2006".
Wonder what the meetings between the marketing team and the engineering team were like for this one.
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Your response is the same as mine.
When I worked a Motorola, and was part of their LUG, one of the members was talking about a Beowulf cluster they made. Like bad management, they ordered a bunch of desktop PC they couldn't use, and no one authorized their return. So they sat around in unopened boxes until his team decided to make a Beowulf cluster so they could model the electron flow around traces in an 8 layer circuit board before they had them actually pressed.
Each prototype board cost around $10,000 to create. And after that you have to test to make sure the electron field, around a trace, does not affect another trace. Manually it took a long time and is prone to errors. So if there is a problem, it's another $10,000, and another, until you get it correct.
With this Beowulf cluster they could model the electron flow around a trace and then only make one prototype, saving a ton of money and time. And this was all done with an ISO off the net and a bunch of forgotten computers.
Another, perhaps even more popular Linux cluster distro is Rocks Clusters.
While I don't have personal experience with OSCAR, Rocks is really good. These days, doing a cluster with a "normal" distro is insane. I think MS will have to think long and hard before they come up with something equally easy to install and manage as Rocks.
That being said, I think MS is not targeting Win CCS at academic supercomputing, which has a long history of using Unix/Linux, but rather they want to expand HPC to business customers who otherwise have a 100 % MS environment.
"Microsoft Message Passing Interface (MS-MPI) implementation is fully compatible with the reference MPICH2"
I guess given the fact that Microsoft is pathetically behind Linux when it comes to high performance computing, they may actually play by the rules here.
Anyone has an insight on this one? Do they have a API lock-in strategy here as well?