Open-source library to be a part of Win Server 2003

NEW DELHI: Software giant Microsoft, unlike other big software makers has always been a strong open-source critic. But things are beginning to change; it seems, as is clear by a recent announcement according to which Microsoft plans to bundle an open-source library with one of its solutions.

Message Passing Interface, a library specification for message passing proposed by a consortium of supercomputing vendors will be bundled with Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition, to be expected to ship in the first half of next year.

Microsoft has tied up with Argonne National Library and will be using its implementation of MPI called MPICH2. The MPICH2 Website says that its goals are to provide an MPI implementation for important platforms, including clusters, SMPs, and massively parallel processors. It also provides a vehicle for MPI implementation research and for developing new and better parallel programming environments. MPICH2 has been extensively tested on several platforms, including Linux, IA32 and IA64, and Windows, the site says.

According to Kyril Faenov, Microsoft's director for High Performance Computing, this is the first time that Microsoft will be shipping an open-source component inside its solution. The exercise has been successful and ISVs are happy as it eases their work to a large extent, Faenov added. Microsoft also stands to gain by this association as it saves them the cost of developing a "complex piece of software."

This looks a win-win proposition for both Microsoft and Argonne, as it gives cost and time advantage to the former and a commercial platform for its product to the latter.

So what does Microsoft give in return "all fixes and changes" for the MPI component, informs Faenov.