Windows HPC Server 2008, released by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

on 22 September 2008, is the successor product to Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. Like WCCS, Windows HPC Server 2008 is designed for high-end applications that require high performance computing clusters (HPC stands for High Performance Computing). This version of the server software is claimed to efficiently scale to thousands of cores. It includes features unique to HPC workloads: a new high-speed NetworkDirect RDMA, highly efficient and scalable cluster management tools, a

service-oriented architecture In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provide ...

(SOA) job scheduler, an MPI library based on open-source

MPICH MPICH, formerly known as MPICH2, is a freely available, portable implementation of MPI, a standard for message-passing for distributed-memory applications used in parallel computing. MPICH is Free and open source software with some public domain ...

2, and cluster interoperability through standards such as the High Performance Computing Basic Profile (HPCBP) specification produced by the

Open Grid Forum The Open Grid Forum (OGF) is a community of users, developers, and vendors for standardization of grid computing. It was formed in 2006 in a merger of the Global Grid Forum and the Enterprise Grid Alliance. The OGF models its process on the I ...

(OGF). In June 2008, a system built collaboratively with the

National Center for Supercomputing Applications The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is a state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale computer infrastructure that advances research, science and engineering based in the United States. NCSA operates as a ...

(NCSA) and Microsoft ranked #23 on the

TOP500 The TOP500 project ranks and details the 500 most powerful non- distributed computer systems in the world. The project was started in 1993 and publishes an updated list of the supercomputers twice a year. The first of these updates always coinci ...

list, a ranking of the world's fastest supercomputers, with a LINPACK score of 68.5 teraflops. The NCSA supercomputer uses both Windows Server HPC and

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a commercial open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-64, Power ISA, ARM64, and IBM Z and a desktop ...

4. By November 2011, that ranking had dropped to #253. Since then, all Windows computers have dropped off the TOP500 list, and Linux has replaced all other operating systems on the list. In the November 2008 rankings, published by TOP500, a Windows HPC system built by the Shanghai Supercomputer Center achieved a peak performance of 180.6 teraflops and was ranked #11 on the list. In June 2015, that was the last Windows machine left on the list (dropped off later) then ranked 436, just barely made the TOP500 (with Windows Azure dropping off earlier).

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2

Windows HPC Server 2008 R2, also known as ''Windows Server 2008 R2 HPC Edition'' (codenamed Windows 7 Server) based on

Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2 is the fifth version of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft and released as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generall ...

, was released on 20 September 2010.

Windows HPC Pack

After Windows HPC Server 2008 R2, Microsoft released HPC Pack 2008 R2 in four flavors: Express, Enterprise, Workstation and Cycle Harvesting. Later it simplified the offer by releasing HPC Pack 2012 that combined capabilities of all four versions of HPC Pack 2008 R2. HPC Pack 2012 can be installed on top of any

Windows Server 2012 Windows Server 2012, codenamed "Windows Server 8", is the sixth version of the Windows Server operating system by Microsoft, as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It is the server version of Windows based on Windows 8 and succe ...

Standard or Datacenter.
/ref> The head node for the HPC-Pack requires Windows Server, however the node computers can be Windows 10 or Windows 11.

References

External links

*
Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Technical Library
{{DEFAULTSORT:Windows Hpc Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 Job scheduling Grid computing