Service Pack, Azure Scheduler Update Released for HPC

As part of Microsoft’s high performance computing (HPC) products, a fourth HPC service pack and an updated Azure HPC Scheduler development kit were released in June 2012. In addition to bug fixes, the updates provide better use of Azure resources, allowing customers to make use of Azure to quickly expand capacity for HPC applications and add compatibility with the latest Windows Azure SDK. Although there will not be a special HPC edition of Windows Server 2012, Microsoft will continue to provide an HPC solution using HPC Pack 2012.

HPC Solutions with Windows and Azure

Windows HPC Server is a special x64 edition of Windows Server 2008 R2. It solves compute-intensive problems on arrays of computers (called compute nodes) under the control of a management server (the head node).

Compute nodes can be the following:

• Dedicated servers as part of an HPC cluster
• Servers that are not part of an HPC cluster
• Windows 7 workstations (referred to as workstation nodes, which do not need