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Microsoft Edges Further into HPC

6/11/2008

By David Nagel

Center for Autonomic Computing, a collaborative effort between Rutgers, the University of Arizona, and the University of Florida;
  • A project at Rutgers that allows students to explore autonomic concepts focused on data center systems;
  • University of Arizona's Autonomic Computing Laboratory (formerly the High Performance Distributed Computing Lab), which is using CCS 2003 in projects largely centered around climate change and ecology;
  • University of Washington's Daggett Research Group, whose research focuses on protein folding and stability, and which has recently added two CCS 2003-based systems to its HPC arsenal;
  • University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which is using Microsoft HPC++ Computational Finance Lab for modeling and analysis of market data, using models deployed via SharePoint Server via a 256-core cluster;
  • University of Washington, which has also used the HPC++ CompFin Lab for exploring "mortgage pricing techniques as well as the effect that mortgage default and prepayment have on mortgage pools," according to Microsoft;
  • The Center for Computation and Technology at Louisiana State University, which last summer ran an "HPC boot camp" for high schoolers using CCS 2003 on Dell systems, enabling students to build their own small-scale HPC clusters for running simple code; and
  • University of Iowa's Medical Imaging HPC & Informatics Laboratory, which is using CCS 2003 on research aimed at improving digital medical imaging.

    • Those using CCS 2003 who participate in Microsoft's Software Assurance program will be able to migrate automatically to HPC Server 2008 when it's released later this year. Rutgers will be among those making the transition.

    "We are looking forward to moving to Windows HPC Server 2008 when it becomes available specifically for research at the Center for Autonomic Computing at Rutgers," said Manish Parashar, a Rutgers professor and co-director of the Center for Autonomic Computing, in a statement released today. "HPC Server 2008 will provide us with some key capabilities such as integrated virtualization support, which we can use to support a wide class of applications. It will also provide us with interesting autonomic behaviors for power and energy management, performance and productivity management, and dynamic on-demand scaling."

    "Microsoft has been focused on working with education throughout our history," Microsoft's Hammond told us. "HPC is a new space for us, but it crosses over into our core platform." HPC Server 2008 is built on Windows Server 2008, a fact that, according to Hammond, will make the migration path less complex. "We're hopeful that we'll have a rapid transition to 2008 when it becomes available. We're trying to take the power, ease of use, and optimization of the Microsoft platform and apply it to challenges universities are facing."


    About the author: Dave Nagel is the executive editor for 1105 Media's educational technology online publications and electronic newsletters. He can be reached at dnagel@1105media.com.

    Have any additional questions? Want to share your story? Want to pass along a news tip? Contact Dave Nagel, executive editor, at dnagel@1105media.com.

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    David Nagel, "Microsoft Edges Further into HPC," Campus Technology, 6/11/2008, http://www.campustechnology.com/article.aspx?aid=64252

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