Microsoft Confirms Windows Server HPC Edition Due in 2005

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft technologists are busy on both ends of the virtualization spectrum. On one end, Microsoft is nearing delivery of partitioning technology that will let users divide a single server into several virtual machines to run different workloads more efficiently. On the other end, Microsoft says it will deliver clustering technology for lashing together separate PCs and servers to tackle technical workloads with a high-performance-computing edition of its Windows 2003 Server in the second half of 2005.

Clusters of Unix servers have long been used in academic and research settings to tackle large, computer-intensive workloads, such as weapons design, drug discovery, and weather prediction, which lend themselves to massive parallelism. Linux is now gaining great traction as a cheaper alternative to Unix for these high-performance-computing clusters. Increasingly, clustering technology is also being applied to workloads in the commercial sector by vendors like IBM and Oracle, which are pushing grid technology as part of their independent visions of creating computing and application utilities that resemble the electric grid. But HPC clusters use distinct protocols from those used in cluster databases in parallel for transaction processing, and it seems reasonable that the HPC edition of Windows Server is probably not going to aim at parallel database clustering.

Clusters of commodity Intel X86-based computers are increasingly being used for HPC workloads. Of the 500 most powerful supercomputers on the planet, 287 are based on extended X86 architectures, according to the list of 500 biggest supercomputers released last week at the Supercomputer Conference in Heidelberg, Germany. Six months ago, that number was 189, and one year ago it was only 119 (see "Top 500 Supers List Dominated by Teraflops-Class Machines").

While the X86 architecture is no stranger to supercomputers, Microsoft is still looking to gain credibility in the HPC sector, and, as we reported several weeks ago (see "Windows HPC Edition Is in the Works"), Microsoft is working on an HPC edition of Windows Server to try to catch the migration wave off Unix clusters and to take some market share away from Linux clusters. As commercial grid computing becomes more popular, and related HPC spending increases, Microsoft would like to have a decent number of reference accounts under its belt, such as Cornell University's Theory Center, which has helped to validate Wintel as an alternative to RISC/Unix architectures by running HPC workloads on Unisys ES7000 servers, equipped with both 32-bit Intel X86 and 64-bit Itanium processors, and Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003. The CTC will likely be instrumental in validating Windows Server 2003 HPC Edition as well.

Microsoft is not saying a lot about Windows Server 2003 HPC Edition, except that it is expected to ship more than a year from now, during the second half of 2005, and that it will target scalable, parallel computing workloads in vertical market segments such as engineering, life sciences, and finance. The company also says this version of Windows will support established HPC clustering standards, such as Messaging Passing Interface (MPI), and that, in order to tackle the HPC market, it will require help from its partners, including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and Verari.

What is not yet known is how Microsoft will package and ship Windows Server 2003 HPC Edition. With a cluster of hundreds or thousands of nodes, will Microsoft license fees be in the same ballpark as editions of Windows Server 2003 available today? That seems unlikely, considering that HPC cluster builders, like government and academic institutions (the ones that will give Microsoft the much-needed reference accounts), are long-since used to paying for Linux workstation licenses for their parallel clusters. Whether Microsoft will include all of the necessary middleware to manage large clusters directly in the operating system, or in an additional product, is still up in the air. Then there is the 64-bit question. Microsoft has three architectural options for 64-bit computing today, with Intel's 64-bit Itaniums, the hybrid 32-bit/64-bit Xeons, and AMD's hybrid 32-bit/64-bit Opterons. Microsoft could keep it simple and stick with 32-bit support, since cluster nodes tend to have modest memory needs.

For more on Microsoft's options for the HPC Edition, see "Windows HPC Edition Is in the Works," where we laid out the issues Microsoft is facing as it tries to break into this market.