Microsoft Breaks Into Top 10 of World’s Most Powerful Supercomputers

By Peter Varhol

Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, WA)  debuted in the top 10 of the world’s most powerful supercomputers with Shanghai Supercomputer Center and Dawning Information Industry Co. Ltd. (Shanghai, PRC) , which ranked at No. 10 with 180.6 teraflops, the parallel computing speed, and 77.5 percent efficiency. An achievement considering that 12 months ago in Reno,Nevada, Microsoft was at 116 on the Top500 list at Top500.org. This is on the heels of Windows HPC Server 2008 releasing to the manufacturing industry in September.

  Windows HPC Server 2008 makes supercomputing more accessible to end users by allowing them to harness computing power through a familiar Windows desktop environment. It also reduces the complexity of Top500 runs and increases efficiency. Microsoft announces the availability of the Top500 Excellence Kit, which includes a Top500 guide containing best practices and internal knowledge from Microsoft developers on how to achieve the highest-efficiency LINPACK runs. As a part of the kit, Microsoft is including several management and performance tools used in its 180.6-teraflop run, a High-Performance LINPACK (HPL) Wizard that automatically tunes HPL for your cluster environment.

Sources:  Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.