Comments on: Microsoft creating Windows for supercomputers

The company is looking to produce a version of Windows for high-performance computing, a move seen as a direct attack on a Linux stronghold.

[fullewr]

Oh Boy!

The rush to acquire this will probably be as great as it is for Windows on mainframes.

Hardware Vendor for Windows HPC

Gee, I wonder who the hardware vendor of choice will be for this venture? Why not draw the obvious conclusion - Sun Microsystems will be on the HCL for Windows HPC before you know it. It certainly won't be Linux favorites, HPQ or IBM.

Why not just SAY it? What's holding you back? Granted, Sun must be swallowing hard to make this one work, but it makes sense in light of the recent truce called for by Gates and McNealy.

Give me a break!

As someone with years of research experience in high performance, parallel and supercomputing I can't see how Windows could meet a couple of major requirements for efficient supercomputing applications, such as: providing lightweight(!) and optimized(!) execution environment for number crunching purposes with all other services (IO, user interface, compilation, editing, data storage...) moved to front-end computers and/or processors. Now the real question is: What Microsoft assumes to be a supercomputer? Just a bit faster than usual Pentium 4 box maybe? Or they think superservers or server clusters are the same thing as supercomputers?

I believe MS is attempting to once again exploit relative computer illiteracy of an average customer/user by using bold terms for purely marketing purposes further blurring terminology up to the point when they can claim everything imaginable is invented by MS or supported by Windows. What could be the next step? Maybe providing a couple of desktop themes featuring DNA molecules and claiming that Windows is "genetic computing compliant" platform? I would not be surprised at all.

[Earl Benser]

Here we go again....

Once more, some one has slapped Bill Gates across the face with
a dead carp to get his focus on one more idea that he had totally
overlooked. And once more, Bill turns to the MS cookie jar and
begins to throw money against the wall hoping to find either an
answer he can buy or an answer he can steal.

Does anyone ever wonder why DOS looks so very much like
CPM?

[Instructor]

Leading OS Company?? I don't think so!!

I just had to send this "ZDNe Talk Back" to you since it you need to get after your writers. It has to do with the article "Microsoft creating Windows for supercomputers" by Stephen Shankland and Ina Fried. I hope you will read this and possibly try to take corrective actions and have your writers check their facts.

ZDNet - TalkBack -

I take real offense at the lie that was written in this article "Long been the leading operating-system company". Both Stephen Shankland and Ina Fried should go back to school and get their Comp Sci degrees. Maybe then they will learn who has been writing operating systems longer, IBM. I do not work for IBM nor never have. But I have been working with computers since 1980 and I know that before this, IBM was one of a few that were writing operating systems for few machines that existed at that time. As for the operating system that is the leading OS in computer technology, no operating system as yet holds a candle to the MVS operating system that run the largest data centers in the world. It also has one of the fewest hacker incident reports of all the operating systems. So please get your stories straight before you give credit to such a kid company as MicroSoft, they haven't as yet taken off their training pants.

PS: The day that MS creates a supercomputer OS is the day I'll probably retire. But I think at the rate that MS is going, I've got a number of years to go.

[George Cole]

largest data centers

http://www.analogstereo.com/land_rover_freelander_owners_manual.htm

Interesting but incomplete

Great story. This will set the HPC initiative 20 years back!
Which operating system was used by Virginia Tech to build the
third largest supercomputer as a 2000+ cluster in record time
and little money? MAC OS X!
Which is the company that has had a HPC initiative and group for
several years and has made inroads in Biotech and other high
tech areas? Apple Computers
Where are these facts mentioned in your article? Nowhere!

[scharada]

Face the Facts

MS might not have been the Co, that wrote the OS and a lot of poeple know the story.... now a lot of you can keep wining about who did and who did not, whown invented and who did not .... and i can mention quiet a few of those starting from the heads of Sun, Oracle, Apple .... all the way down to you guys... i think you should retire now and save yourself the hassle of watching the HPC come through.

MS knew how to build products that suited several needs and has long been VERY successful in doint it. Now it bothers you and poeple like you that they are looking at the supercomputer arena ???? WATCH THEM DO IT ...
I don't think your position is much better then the longtime inventor of supercomputers (cray's founder) who has joined MS to do exactly what you and other don't think MS is capable of...
True, it will take them few years to get there, but they will while you guys are wining...

FACE THE FACTS and get over it...