Microsoft visits cash-strapped Wall Street to roll out HPC Server 2008

This may seem like a weird time to go to Wall Street to announce a new operating system, but that's what Microsoft Corp. did today. At a technology conference in New York, the software vendor formally detailed its Windows HPC Server 2008 software, a high-performance computing version of Windows offering some features that may appeal to bailout-seeking financial services firms.

First, the new release — the successor to Microsoft's Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 technology — will do far less damage to corporate bottom lines than bad subprime mortgages have inflicted. HPC Server 2008, which can scale from two to 2,000 or more server nodes, costs $475 per node, with each consisting of between one and four processor sockets.

Second, HPC Server 2008 includes new management and diagnostics functionality designed to improve the ability of systems administrators to identify performance issues, such as system latency and its root causes. The software is also integrated with desktop applications; for instance, a user working in Excel can send a processing job to an HPC cluster with just one mouse click, similar to what it takes to launch a printing task.

And third, Microsoft said that HPC Server 2008 will enable users to run complex algorithms, such as those used to determine the amount of risk in investment portfolios, in a parallel environment on multiple server cores without having to rewrite their application code.

Financial services firms are increasingly adopting HPC technologies, something Microsoft pointed out in its announcement that HPC Server 2008 has been released to manufacturing.

Among the people quoted in Microsoft's press release was Jay Dweck, global head of strategies and technology for the institutional securities group at Morgan Stanley, an investment banking firm that late Sunday received permission from the Federal Reserve to become a more regulated bank holding company. "We are closely evaluating Microsoft's Windows HPC Server 2008 to provide Morgan Stanley with the ability to maintain our competitive edge," Dweck said in a statement.