Posted on 04/13/2006 9:04:23 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Microsoft is preparing to take on Linux in a battle over price and performance, according to John Borozan, product manager for the forthcoming Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (WCCS) software.
WCCS is a new version of Windows designed for high-performance computing (HPC) applications, such as those used for geological exploration, but it will also have a valuable role to play working with Excel spreadsheets.
WCCS will go on sale in the summer. Borozan said the price has not yet been set but will be very competitive against Linux rivals. Borozan added that 80 percent of existing HPC systems use x86 chips and run Linux software.
"HPC workloads are growing faster than any other x86 workload," said Borozan. "In 2004 HPC jumped 70 percent. In 2000 almost all HPC was on Risc systems, now almost all of it is on x86. Ten percent of x86 servers go into HPC systems." He added that the 64bit feature in AMD's Opteron and Xeon EM64T chips give HPC on x86 systems another boost. "In this market 64bit is pretty much a requirement," he said.
Borozan argued that WCCS would also appeal to companies working with Excel spreadsheets, which could run on WCCS thanks to integration between WCCS and Excel Services in the forthcoming Office 12. Companies could store complex spreadsheets on a WCCS system and users could work with the spreadsheets via a web interface. This would give the spreadsheet the processing power of the cluster, and enable firms to prevent spreadsheets from being removed from the server.
WCCS is based on the same kernel as Windows Server 2003 x64. It has been locked down so that it can only be used for HPC applications because it will be sold at a lower price, Borozan said.
Microsoft has also developed its own job scheduler and message-passing interface (MPI) layer, built using de facto standard open-source code. "By using this layer we made it easy for independent software vendors to port their products to WCCS," Borozan said. WCCS is expected to be launched in June.
Somehow the terms "High Performance Computing" and "Excel Spreadsheets" should never appear in the same article.
heh--I was thinking the same thing. Excel?
Marketeers at work.
Clustering is perhaps the area Windows is most UN-suited to. While I can see doing research to keep up in the field, the fact is Linux is so popular in clusters because it's free-as-in-beer. No one that runs a cluster center is going to drop Linux when switching to a Windows cluster will additionally cost them a license fee for each and every copy on each node. Beowulf clusters caught on in the first place because researchers realized they could get supercomputer performance by adding a bunch of pc caliber servers together to act as one machine, without having to pay license fees for each machine's OS.
"Clustering is perhaps the area Windows is most UN-suited to."
That and HPC in general. HPC wants efficient, tight code with as few resources devoted to the OS as possible. That is the antithesis of Microsoft software development practices.
Linux is much better in that regard.
When Microsoft talks about "High-Performance Computing" they really mean that it 'Blue Screens' faster than anything you've ever seen before. Now, they'll have entire clusters with a BSoD; it's actually quite impressive in a sick and twisted sort of way.
Well said.
Some other planet's SETI program should be looking for light in the BSoD's shade of blue.
No kidding. I run both Windows XP and Linux and I've had to reboot the Linux machine once for every 100 Windows reboots.
The only cluster Microsoft seems "Excel" at is the cluster f*!
Microsoft has also developed its own job scheduler and message-passing interface (MPI) layer, built using de facto standard open-source code.
Here Microsoft is using Open Source software to reduce their time to market, lower development costs, an expand into new areas.
Meanwhile they spend a lot of money trying to convince their customers that Open Source is a really bad idea that should avoided at all costs.
heh--don't let our resident troll see this or he'll stroke out.
Priced comparibly to Linux? Then they should just give it away because the majority of the HPC community uses ROCKS (which is free). As for schedulers they use Condor, SGE or LSF. They will not port their scheduler scripts to some unknown Microcrap scheduler. Why fix it if it doesn't break?
That caught my eye, also. I'm assuming they are still referring to their bogus study on TCO.
1) Microsoft can't beat Linux's price for HPC. Even $50 a piece adds up when you have 1,000 boxes. $50,000 more for what benefit?
2) Microsoft can't make it as easy as Apple has to set up and manage a cluster. Right now you can get HPC cluster systems out-of-the-box from Apple for relatively cheap (ready-to-go 16-node 32-proc starts at $60K with support), and be running HPC applications with little knowledge of clustering.
3) The only place where this might be wanted is those few places that for some reason put huge amounts of data and calculations on Excel spreadsheets. Any Excel spreadsheet that can't be quickly calculated by a modern fast Opteron system needs its data to be put in a different format.
ROFL!
Yeah, plus I'd say 99% of the HPC binaries are for Unix. Someone would have to port the programs to Windows. We use several programs that were discontinued by the authors from 1999. Source code ain't available.
I'd love to see them try that. TCO on a cluster is totally different from what they're used to doing. They're used to saying that training will kill the value of any switch, but in this market everybody's already used to UNIX variants.
Well, except for Cornell, which has the one Windows system on the Top500, down at #310. But Microsoft is about to start pumping money ($400K/year) into them so they can set up a bigger one. You know you're hurting when you have to pay someone to use your stuff.
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