High Performance Computing is without a doubt at the opposite pole from mainstream computers. But Microsoft is laboring to make a difference, and while mainstream and HPC might never become intersecting concepts, Windows for supercomputers is indeed opening up the door for more high performance computing customers. According to the Redmond giant, companies in the manufacturing industry have steered clear of HPC due to the high management demands, the proprietary systems and the complex architectures offered.

"In the manufacturing industry you can easily classify HPC applications broadly into two categories, first is traditional engineering simulation e.g. Automotive Crash Simulation where you are trying to predict structural behavior of the car in an impact event or computational fluid dynamics where you are trying [to] predict airflow over the airplane wing. Second category is in High Tech industry for EDA applications and parallel software build processing," revealed Tejas Karmarkar an HPC solution specialist at Microsoft.

With Windows Compute Cluster 2003 and Windows HPC Server 2008 Microsoft aims to streamline high performance computing environments for potential customers. The constant evolution in terms of hardware has made 8 CPU blade servers affordable when it comes down to price, but not the same is valid for the software designed to run on HPC infrastructures.

"Microsoft is doing its parts by developing integrated platform and tools for HPC environments with focus on users, administrators and developers who can take advantage of technology advancement in this area to solve bigger and more complex engineering problems," Karmarkar added.

The main benefit associated with Windows for supercomputers, is not the platform itself but the intimate integration with additional software products from Microsoft. Karmarkar mentioned Active Directory, Windows Deployment Services, and Microsoft Systems Center among the technologies that will play nice with its HPC versions of Windows.

"Many of our manufacturing customers are adopting or looking to adopt Microsoft's HPC technology here are a couple of recent examples. Callaway Golf's new HPC cluster is delivering an eightfold increase in performance, helping make engineers far more productive and enhancing their ability to deliver innovative, high-quality products. Procter & Gamble was able to deploy a fully functional Windows-based cluster in just a few hours versus two weeks or more previously," Karmarkar said.