Microsoft Plans High-Performance Windows Server 2003

Announced on Wednesday, the Windows Server 2003 HPC Edition is slated to ship in the second half of 2005, according to Microsoft.

Windows Server 2003 HPC Edition is earmarked for parallel computing workloads in vertical markets such as oil and gas, chemical modeling, engineering, life sciences, finance and academia, said Andy Lees, corporate vice president for Windows Server and tools marketing at Microsoft.

The new product represents the sixth edition of Windows Server 2003, a product line that includes Windows Small Business Server 2003 on the low end, three midrange solutions and a DataCenter Edition on the high end. Though the DataCenter Edition is aimed at multiway servers, the HPC Edition is targeted at massive, scale-out supercomputing clusters, Lees said in a meeting with CRN Wednesday in Redmond, Wash.

"It's targeted for that scenario," Lees said. "The HPC environment is typically very broad scale-out. To do that, you have some special hardware. [The HPC edition] has advanced scheduling for complicated parallelism."

Lees declined to comment on whether ISVs such as PolyServ worked with Microsoft to co-develop the new HPC Edition. PolyServ launched a shared data clustering product called Matrix at Microsoft Tech Ed 2004.

Final decisions on distribution of Windows Server 2003 HPC Edition haven't been made yet, but the product likely will be available as part of an OEM program, as with the DataCenter Edition, Lees said. Pricing and licensing details also haven't been finalized, he added.