Microsoft's High Performance Computing Group has launched Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Beta 2, available for download. Improvements to scalability have been made through regularly testing on the 1,000 node cluster in Microsoft Research. Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Beta 2 now integrates with workstations running Windows 7, enabling organisations to use them as cluster compute nodes.
The HPC server empowers parallel development, providing a platform for traditional (batch-based) and service-oriented (interactive) HPC applications. In addition, Visual Studio 2010 helps developers create, debug, and trace HPC applications using familiar tools.
Part of this release is HPC Services for Excel 2010. In addition, Microsoft has collaborated with industry-leading HPC management companies like Adaptive Computing, Clustercorp and Platform Computing to enable hybrid options where Windows HPC Server and Linux work together. Whether it’s a dual boot or dynamic cluster, hybrid options help organisations get more out of HPC investments and provide broader access to HPC resources.
