Windows 7 SP2 Could Be Quite Close, Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP2 Beta Available

The second Service Pack for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 could be quite close, if the evolution of a related operating system from Microsoft is taken into consideration.

Of course, there’s no official word from Microsoft at this point in time on Windows 7 SP2, but the Redmond company did just launch the first Beta development milestone for the second upgrade to the latest iteration of its Windows for supercomputers platform.

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 2 (SP2) Beta is now available for download to early adopters looking to test the release in their high performance environments.

While Windows 7 SP2, Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP2 and Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP2 are different products, fact is that the platforms share the same core and are evolving in parallel.

“The Microsoft HPC Pack 2008 R2 software, and the Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Suite, enables cluster based supercomputing based on x64 versions of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as Windows 7 clients,” Microsoft notes.

“Windows HPC Server can be used for massively parallel programs (computational fluid dynamics, reservoir simulation) as well as embarrassingly parallel programs (BLAST, Monte Carlo simulations).”

Customers that monitored the development of Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP1 and Windows 7 SP1 know that the two upgrades were built in parallel and finalized in late 2010.

Despite this, Microsoft offered Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP1 in December 2010 while Windows 7 SP1 was only made available for download in February 2011.

I don’t doubt the fact that the same will be valid for Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP2 and Windows 7 SP2, but I take this Beta to mean that the second upgrade to Windows 7 might be closer than anyone thinks, even though just as far as the Beta Build is concerned.

“An HPC Pack 2008 R2-based system is a cluster of servers that includes a single head node, and one or more compute nodes,” Microsoft added.

“The head node controls and mediates all access to the cluster resources and is the single point of management, deployment and job scheduling for the compute cluster. It utilizes the existing corporate Active Directory infrastructure for security and account management.”

For the time being, HPC customers can download and start testing Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP2 Beta. There’s no word on Windows 7 SP2 yet.

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP1 is available for download here.

Windows 7 SP1 RTM and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 RTM are available for download here.