Future versions of the Windows platform will be intimately connected with parallel computing. And Microsoft needs to address the evolution of parallel on multiple microprocessor cores by adapting the development process of the Windows operating system to the new computing architecture designs. Additionally, this trend, which currently is in embryonic stage, will have to be generalized until it reaches a status quo for all software being built, not just for the Microsoft platform. An increase in horsepower will enable developers to harvest hardware resources to create, "humanistic software applications that incorporate speech, conversation, rich visualization and anticipatory execution of tasks," Microsoft revealed.

Microsoft technical fellow Dr. Burton Smith, delivering a keynote address at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, emphasized the need to overhaul software development. "Our industry and the universities must work together to reinvent not only computing, but also the computing profession," Dr. Smith said. "The coming years will fundamentally reshape software and transform the way people use and interact with computers. In order for consumers to enjoy performance improvements in the future, mass-market technology providers will have to embrace parallel computing to differentiate and compete. It's vital that software and hardware adapt to new models of computing."

The Redmond company is currently on a hype over the adoption statistics of Windows Compute Cluster Server (CCS) 2003. Microsoft informed that its Windows platform for the high-performance computing (HPC) market is featured on supercomputers that have made the top 500 HPC machines worldwide. "Fresh off the revelation that Microsoft high-performance computing (HPC) technologies are being widely adopted by customers, software and hardware partners, a technical leader from Microsoft Corp. today discussed how the foundations of computer science and engineering must be reinvented to deal with the mass-market adoption of processors with many computing cores," Microsoft stated in a press release.