1. Making Supercomputing More Available
and Accessible
Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Beta 2
Microsoft High Performance Computing
April, 2010

2. The Landscape
2

3. The landscape
In a world with an insatiable and
Supercomputing power helps
growing appetite for data
scientists, engineers and analysts
computational performance is
extract meaning from the data
critical. Science, industry and
deluge, speeding research,
government alike now face the
development and discovery.
problem of too much information.
Continued increases in processing
power are now only possible by
increasing the number of cores per
chip—a hardware issue just
became a software problem.
3

4. Windows HPC Server 2008 R2
Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 makes supercomputing broadly available
and accessible to the scientists, engineers and analysts who need it most
Takes
Makes
advantage of
Offers world supercomputing
existing
class simple to
technology
performance manage and
investments and
easy to use
skills
4

5. Today’s Milestone:
Windows HPC Server 2008 R2
Beta 2
5

6. Sustained HPC Services for
Commitment to Excel 2010
Performance Momentum
Cluster of Interoperability
Workstations Momentum
6

7. Sustained commitment to performance
Windows matches Linux performance on
ANSYS FLUENT 12.0, other benchmarks
1800
1600
Fluent Rating (Higher is better)
1400
1200
1000
Courtesy of ANSYS, Inc
800 Windows
600 Linux
400
200
0
8 16 32 64 128 256
Number of CPU Cores
Reference: Dataset is External Flow over a Truck Body, 14M cells, public benchmark. ANSYS FLUENT 12.0 data to be
posted at http://www.fluent.com/software/fluent/fl6bench/new.htm. Same hardware configuration (IBM System x®
iDataPlex™ platform with 2.66GHz Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500, 24GB DDR3 memory per node, Mellanox Connect-
X® InfiniBand) was used for both Windows HPC Server 2008 and Linux runs.
Deep engagement within the Top500,
including mixed CPU/GPGPU clusters
7

8. Sustained commitment to performance
Maximizing parallel HPC applications
Integration with Windows HPC
Server 2008 R2: MS-MPI, Interactive
SOA-based applications, HPC
Services for Excel 2010
Parallel Computing Platform: Makes
parallel programming easier and more
productive
GPU computing: NVIDIA Parallel
Nsight 1.0 accelerates CPU + GPU
application development
Extensive third party support for
Visual Studio: Intel Parallel Studio
Development Toolkit plug-ins,
OpenMP support
8

9. Cluster of workstations
Expand the capacity of HPC clusters while increasing the return on existing
technology investments by utilizing desktop cycles as part of overall
HPC infrastructure
New ability to add Windows 7
workstations as compute nodes
View and monitor workstations the
same as dedicated compute nodes
Time of day scheduling for workstation
availability
Draining interval for graceful
preemption
9

10. Interoperability momentum
Windows and Linux HPC working together
Microsoft collaborates with industry-leading HPC management companies to
enable hybrid solutions, helping organizations get more out of HPC
investments and provide broader access to HPC resources.
MOAB Adaptive HPC Suite works with Windows
HPC Server to intelligently allocate jobs across
Linux and Windows, scaling Windows HPC Server
as necessary.
Rocks+ Hybrid dual boot solution allows easy
deployment of Windows HPC Server alongside
Linux on shared hardware.
Platform ISF Adaptive Cluster allocates Windows
and Linux HPC resources dynamically based on
policies and current workload demand.
10

11. Interoperability momentum
Hybrid HPC clusters
Dual Boot HPC Clusters
Dynamic HPC Clusters
11

12. HPC Services for Excel 2010 momentum
Top systems integrators and consultants including Wipro, Infusion and Grid Dynamics are
now ready to help customers increase business agility and accelerate time to results by easily
transitioning desktop calculations to Windows HPC computations.
Microsoft Excel is frequently used as the programming
environment for computation and simulations. HPC
Services for Excel 2010 helps enable:
Better business decisions by running larger, more
sophisticated models
Faster response to market trends and more competitive
advantage, by reducing total time to results
Easier regulatory compliance
Life Insurance Actuarial workbook examples
1700 records that took 14 hours now take 2.5
minutes
1 million records that took 7.5 days now take 2
hours
12

13. © 2010 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, Windows Vista and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it
should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.