Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Oil and Gas Industry Prefers Personal HPC Capacity, Says Microsoft
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Microsoft only had a brief moment on the Top 500 supercomputer list
> | before the machine was rebooted as a Linux cluster last fall.
> `----
>
>
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=B2413430-EEAF-455C-9D85-706DC25D148D
>
> The experimental setup of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 in our
> Division has thus far been embarrassing, if not abysmal. It's like alpha
> release, so no wonder it's virtually free for the time being. They try to
> beat Linux using guinea pigs.
>
> Poor lads. How long before the team folds just like Zune, Origami and
> Live? This was Gates' vision, but he has left the building.
>
>
> Related:
>
> Microsoft using early Vista users as guinea pigs?
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Interesting to read in the International Herald Tribune this week
> | about Microsoft hitting a 'crisis of confidence' with its new Vista
> | operating system.
> |
> | [...]
> |
> | Sounds familiar? Your bet - it's almost an exact re-run of the
> | security issues that affected Windows XP in its earliest days.
> |
> | Microsoft wouldn't be using its Vista users - as it did with XP -
> | as guinea pigs, now would it?...
> `----
>
> http://securityblog.itproportal.com/?p=646
"This, of course, plays exactly into Microsoft's view of the HPC server
market and its desire to bring supercomputing out of the data center and
directly into the hands of scientists and other researchers who would
almost certainly rather have a smaller cluster of machines to themselves
all the time than to be forced to share a big cluster that can do the work
a lot faster."
Scientists and researchers already have access to super computers, the large
number cruncher of the MOD for example can be hired per hour or per day. It
has been used for many years in that way. There are others too that they
can access, with teams available to help them turn a theory into a
mathematical model if they need help in that way.
MS will always have trouble in the supercomputer arena unless they radically
change the underlying system. UNIX and Linux can put the programmer closer
to the machine, you can still get direct access to most of the hardware,
including CPU access in assembler, without losing the ability to share. It
can still be a shared environment, there has never been a need to put a
thick wad of cotton wool between the hardware and the code. Maybe was a
wise situation for early Windows, but Linux never followed that path, put
your system resources distribution at a low enough level and you can omit
some of the cotton wool MS has to use with no increase in risk. I suppose
in a sense we can say that Linux client got that ability by accident, with
it coming up from the UNIX server world, but still a piece of good fortune
all the same.
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