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Windows Breaks Into Supercomputer Top 10

Posted by timothy on from the adversity-breeds-strength-in-redmond-too dept.

yanx0016 writes "Wow, that's some news this week at SuperComputing 08. Apparently Microsoft Windows HPC Server 2008, with a Chinese hardware OEM (Dawning), made #10 on the Top500 list, edging out #11 by only 600 Gflops. Folks were shocked to see Microsoft getting so serious around HPC; I think we are only beginning to see a glimpse of Microsoft in the HPC field."

7 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. there are lots of Windows developers out there. by khasim · · Score: 4, Informative

    That is, programmers who are familiar with Windows more than other systems.

    And Microsoft is also looking to roll out a new language that is supposed to make parallel programming much easier for those programmers.

    If it works, there would be a LOT more apps that take advantage of these systems.

    1. Re:there are lots of Windows developers out there. by BasharTeg · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yes, actually. There are many concurrency projects for .NET. Take a look at declarative languages like F#, PLINQ (parallel LINQ), Parallel C#, Polyphonic C#

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F_Sharp_programming_language

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLINQ

      http://www.parallelcsharp.com/

      http://research.microsoft.com/~nick/polyphony/

    2. Re:there are lots of Windows developers out there. by LingNoi · · Score: 4, Informative

      Problem is they've missed the boat. Linux already has compilers for multiple CPUs

      Look at this chart..

      http://www.top500.org/stats/list/32/os

      Windows HPC 2008 is on 4 machines out of 500. (+1 is windows 2003 if you want to count that)
      Linux is on 454 out of 500 super computers

      Which Operating System do you think is going to have better tools to support Super Computing?

      Also I am hoping you mentioned Direct3D as to get a point across and you're not suggesting that Direct3D be used on these machines?

  2. From the article, pricing is by joeflies · · Score: 5, Informative

    "With the release of HPC Server 2008 a few weeks ago, Microsoft also offered an academic version priced at $15 per node to generate interest. By comparison, a commercial license runs $450 per node"

  3. Re:Off topic, but I have to mention it by Weaselmancer · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ok, just because I'm strange I had to go and figure it out.

    A C64, according to this guy runs at about 320 flops.

    So, it would take that C64 600*10^9 / 320 = 1,875,000,000 seconds. That's 59.46 years.

    Wiki says there were 30 million C64 units ever made.

    So that would be 1,875,000,000 seconds / 30,000,000 = 62.5 seconds.

    It would take every single C64 ever made about a minute to make up the difference.

    Wow.

    Crap I'm old. =)

    --
    Weaselmancer
    rediculous.
  4. Windows systems are in top500 are declining by Lennie · · Score: 5, Informative

    What's missing in the article is that there are only a few windows-based systems in the top500 and there numbers have been declining over the years.

    --
    New things are always on the horizon
  5. Re:Off topic, but I have to mention it by dacut · · Score: 3, Informative

    Keep in mind: you're talking about a processor which doesn't even have integer multiplication, let alone any floating point operations. And you have only three 8-bit registers to perform these operations in. Executing 1k instructions for even a basic FLOP is not inconceivable here.