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HPC Is Mainstream

Earlier this week, I talked about Microsoft's new HPC 2008, a supercomputer-style version of the OS based on clusters aimed at scientists, engineers and massive data-mining/massaging apps.

I lamented the fact these high-end OSes and hardware don't mean much to mainstream IT -- that we're missing out on all that power. In fact, most of our cores, especially on the desktop, go unused (I wrote about that problem in this cover story).

Microsoft is one step ahead of me, at least when it comes to HPC 2008, and is now positioning this clustering tool right at IT. Hopefully its hardware partners, such as Cray, will go along for the ride and give us commodity supercomputers that run database, e-mail and even Web apps. This could give the Crays and the SGIs a whole new lease on life.

Posted by Doug Barney on September 25, 2008


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