A supercomputer using Windows HPC Server entered petaflop land.
Last week the organization behind the World's Top 500 Supercomputers list announced that China grabbed the supercomputing leadership spot with the Tianhe-1A system located at the National supercomputer Center in Tianjin. The monster system has achieved a performance level of 2.57 petaflops per second--literally quadrillions of calculations per second.
However Network World points out that a Windows HPC Server-based supercomputer has actually broken the petaflop speed barrier, the Tsubame 2.0 computer based at the Tokyo Institute of Technology.
"We saw outstanding performance from Windows HPC Server during our Linpack benchmarking run on Tsubame 2.0," said Satoshi Matsuoka, professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. "It broke the Petaflop barrier and was on par with Linux at this scale. In a power-optimized configuration, it recorded over a Gigaflop/Watt, showing it is nearly three times more energy efficient than an average laptop. We were very excited to see this level of performance given Windows applications will be an important part of our work with industry partners."
The problem Microsoft faced with its Top 500 ranking is that the achievement wasn't recognized because the same machine was able to achieve higher speeds using Linux. General manager of Microsoft's technical computing group Bill Hilf said that the benchmarking tests were performed on both Linux and Windows with a resulting 5-percent difference, however Linux came out on top. That said, the Tokyo Institute was only allowed to submit one test to the Top 500 group, and obviously chose the faster of the two.
Still, Microsoft seemed pleased with the results despite not making the Top 500. "We're not trying to be a supercomputing company," Hilf said. "We're trying to say 'how do we mainstream all of this stuff so that HPC becomes broadly available at all levels.'"
"For us, it's not about some exotic supercomputers that are available to a small amount of users," he added. "We're really interested in the bottom 500,000 computing users."
The Top 500 list showed that only five computers where using Windows while 459 used Linux.
Too true...
I would be using it for physics simulations such as particle interaction and extra dimensional interaction simulations.
Not until you ditch that Hayes modem.
Amen... I want to simulate a simple universe with fundamental force and let it simulate formation of structures and observe thermodynamics at work... on Matlab that is
this explains why relatives always try to get me to fix their POS 66mhz pentium machines instead of throwing the damn things away
Linux is literally 100x more customizable for these specialized applications that are run on it.....MS cant match that. The place where windows fits in is for use of more widepsread applications
The profits really aren't that large. Even if they supplied a 'supercomputer edition' of Windows for every one of the top 500, and were able to charge exorbitant prices for it, in the face of free competition from Linux and people who actually know how to use it, there's no way they'd come close to the money they made from selling Windows for PCs. Microsoft knows where the money's at.
wow I didn't know this.
I want to have that HPC kernel on my rig !
Looks like complacency is getting the better of MS.
That's truly the awesome part. I'd rather have 3 supercomputers that can perform twice as well as 1 top-performer for the same operational costs (and more than likely initial costs as well).