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Microsoft enters high-performance computing arena

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

BANGALORE: Microsoft today announced its entry into high-performance computing, a market currently dominated by Linux and Unix based systems.

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The Richmond, US-based IT giant is confident that it could build traction in the market with the Windows Compute Cluster Server (CCS) 2003, which it claims is simple and easy to deploy. The CCS is designed to run applications in complex computing environments and aims at taking supercomputing to the mainstream. The company is betting on its user familiarity and technology partnerships to make a dent in the market.

Microsoft has already signed up partners like AMD, Dell, Intel, HP and IBM and ISVs such as Abaqus, Ansys, MSC Software and the ESI group.

“Microsoft is making HPC technology more mainstream by bringing cost advantages, ease-of-use and partner ecosystem of the Windows Server platform to departments in commercial industry and public sector,” said Kyril Faenov, general manager, High Performance Computing, Microsoft Corporation. Faenov added that Microsoft hoped to bring high performance computing capabilities to a much broader set of users.

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Citing an example of how the price of HPC technology has fallen over the years, he said that a 10 G Flops Cray machine in 1991 that cost around $40 million would cost less than $4000 in 2005.

Faenov said that the CCS would address pain points such as long set up times, lack of integration between clusters and application availability. Microsoft is targeting engineering, oil and gas, academia and public sector as the key verticals.

Vaibhav Phadnis, director-server business group, Microsoft Group said that the company has already identified around a hundred opportunities in India and would also explore the market potential among SMBs.

© CyberMedia News

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