Microsoft's entry into the supercomputing market took another step Tuesday as high-end system leader Cray announced plans for its first machine running the Windows HPC Server operating system.
The Cray CX-1 supercomputer.
(Credit: Cray)Cray announced the CX1 supercomputer, which will run HPC Server 2008 and have list prices between $25,000 and $60,000--prices which make it the company's most affordable system ever.
"Cray sees Microsoft Windows becoming an increasingly important force in the HPC market," Cray Senior VP Ian Miller said in a statement. "With the Cray CX1 high productivity system and Windows HPC Server 2008, we're bringing the power of Cray supercomputing to a much wider range of new users with an affordable and adaptable system that provides incredible value and is easy to install, program and use with a broad array of applications from independent software vendors."
Cray billed the CX1 as an expansion of its lineup, aimed at universities, laboratories, and departments within big businesses. It said that the machine will be "the world's highest-performing computer that uses standard office power."
Although trying to offer Microsoft-based systems at the low end and proprietary systems at the high end may make sense for Cray, it's also an option that can be fraught with peril.
Consider the fate of SGI (formerly Silicon Graphics), which tried a similar approach with its Virtual Workstation product line.
For Microsoft, it is yet another step in the company's bid to be taken more seriously at the highest end of the computing market. Its current product, Windows HPC Server 2008, is the successor to the company's inaugural effort, Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.
Updated 3:12 p.m. to correct the number of the highest ranking Windows cluster
While Windows is ubiquitous on the desktop and well represented in the server racks, until recently it has been nearly absent from the world's largest supercomputers.
Starting several years ago, though, Microsoft made a concerted effort at this part of the market, creating a separate version of Windows solely for computing clusters.
The first big fruits of that effort were evidenced in this year's top 500 list of the world's biggest supercomputers. Five of those on the list were Windows clusters, including one at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications that ranked No. 23.
Of course, that still leaves 495 that aren't running Windows at all.
But, it's significant progress, says Bill Hilf, who once set up Linux clusters for IBM but now oversees Windows Server marketing efforts. He says to expect further gains in the top 500 as Microsoft comes out with its next version of high-end Windows. That release, dubbed Windows HPC Server 2008 and now available in a feature-complete release candidate, is due for a final release this fall.
Hilf said it's this release that will really make Windows suitable for clusters with more than 1,000 separate servers. "We weren't ready to fully take on most of those," he said.
But although Top 500 results are nice, Hilf said perhaps more important is the potential for HPC Server 2008 to allow cluster computing to move further beyond government and university labs and into corporate departments where the massive computing power can be used for things like fraud detection.
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Microsoft's next version of high-end Windows, dubbed Windows HPC Server 2008, is available in a feature-complete release candidate and is due for a final release this fall.
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