Windows HPC Server 2008 Released

Windows HPC Server 2008, a specialized x64 version of Windows Server 2008 for high-performance computing (HPC) applications, was released in Sept. 2008. HPC applications run on multiple processors or computers working in parallel on compute-intensive calculations. HPC originated in academia and research, but Microsoft is attempting to make it more mainstream by targeting the commercial sector, for analysis of financial and other business-related data. Despite aggressive pricing and deals with partners, Microsoft may still have an uphill battle against Linux, which is the dominant HPC OS used on the most powerful HPC clusters.

Targeting Finance, Promoting Familiarity

HPC Server 2008 replaces Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, a product based on Windows Server 2003. Like Compute Cluster Server, HPC Server provides an OS for PC clusters, arrays of identical, commodity servers (compute nodes) working in parallel to solve compute-intensive problems under the control of a management server or head node. Improvements in HPC Server 2008 simplify overall deployment, administration, and management and enable integration with Visual Studio 2008 for application development. In a launch event focusing on Wall Street, on a day when the U.S. government was looking at a bailout for a failing financial sector, Microsoft promoted HPC Server 2008 as a product that could make HPC mainstream by allowing Windows and .NET developers to use Visual Studio as a comprehensive parallel programming environment. In addition to leveraging developers’ knowledge of Windows programming, HPC Server supports standard parallel-processing interfaces, such as OpenMP and MPI, and third-party numerical library providers, performance optimizers, compilers, and debugging toolkits.