Microsoft in High Performance Computing: An Introduction
Aditya Krishnan
Technical Product Manager
Microsoft Corp.
Agenda
2006
What is HPC?
Whats happening with the HPC market?
What are customers looking for?
What is Microsoft planning to do in this space?
Summary
What Is HPC?
Cutting edge problems in science, engineering,
and business that require capabilities beyond
those provided by standard desktops and
servers
2006
Improved Vehicle Aerodynamics
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Packages
used to model vehicle aerodynamics
Source: www.fluent.com/ about/news/pr/pr48.html ; www.fluent.com
2006
Safer Structural Elements
Finite Element Analysis (FEA) packages model
element stress-profiles under various conditions
2006
More Efficient Oil Extraction
Reservoir simulation packages model
oil/gas reservoir rock and fluid properties
Source: http://www.geocap.no/products/a4.eclipse.shtml
2006
Some Clarification On Terminology
HPC Systems
Shared Memory
Distributed Memory
Dedicated Compute Clusters
Collections of
computers, networked
together and acting as
a single large machine
Each node is
dedicated to the
compute cluster
2006
Non-Dedicated Clusters
Collections of
computers, networked
together and acting as
a single large machine
Nodes have day-jobs
and can only provide
cycles when unused
Distributed Memory Becoming The Norm
Clusters are
winning
2006
Growing Use Of
Commodity Components
Commodity
networking
Commodity
processors
2006
Commercial Adoption Is On The Rise
Industry usage
rising
2006
HPC Price Points Are Dropping
1991
1998
2006
Cray Y-MP C916
Sun HPC10000
Small Form Factor PCs
16 x Vector
4GB, Bus
24 x 333MHz Ultra-SPARCII,
24GB, SBus
4 x 2.2GHz Athlon64
4GB, GigE
UNICOS
Solaris 2.5.1
Windows Server 2003 SP1
~10
~10
~10
500
N/A
$40,000,000
$1,000,000 (40x drop)
< $4,000 (250x drop)
Customers
Government Labs
Large Enterprises
Every Engineer and Scientist
Applications
Classified, Climate,
Physics Research
Manufacturing, Energy,
Finance, Telecom
Bioinformatics, Materials Sciences,
Digital Media
System
Architecture
OS
GFlops
Top500 #
Price
2006
Challenges In HPC Today
End Users
IT Pros
Developers
2006
want to do more
science and less IT
apps not keeping up
with ideas
takes a village to
raise a cluster
parallel programming
is difficult
not enough tools
App availability
and integration
Simpler job submission
and monitoring
Easier deployment
and setup
Simplified mgmt
environment
Integrated and
complete development
environment
Platform standards
Microsofts Vision For HPC
Empower scientists and engineers to
interactively employ massive computational
resources to solve complex technical problems
Make distributed computing resources
productive to develop for and
cost-effective to operate
2006
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 (CCS)
Complete, integrated platform
for computational clustering
Core Platform
Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster Edition
x64 only
Cluster Tools
Microsoft Compute Cluster Pack
Built-in Cluster Management, Job Scheduler, and MPI
Interconnect support leveraging Winsock Direct
Availability
Trial Software available at http://www.microsoft.com/hpc
2006
The CCS Value Proposition
Faster time-to-insight
Through simplified cluster deployment,
job submission, and status monitoring
Integration with Windows infrastructure
Allowing customers to use
existing technology and skill-sets
Integrated development environment
Allowing developers to write parallel
applications from within the Visual Studio IDE
2006
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003
Head Node
Active
Directory
Job Mgmt
Cluster Mgmt
Scheduling
Resource Mgmt
Desktop App
Policy,
reports
Jobs
User
Admin
Console
Job Mgr UI
Management
Tasks
Input
Admin
Cmd line
Cmd line
Domain\UserA
DB/FS
High speed,
low latency
interconnect
Data
Node Manager
Job Execution
User App
MPI
2006
CCS Key Features
Easier node deployment and administration
Task-based configuration for head and compute nodes
UI and command line-based node management
Monitoring with Performance Monitor (Perfmon), Microsoft Operations Manager
(MOM), Server Performance Advisor (SPA), and 3rd-party tools
Extensible job scheduler
3rd-party extensibility at job submission and/or job assignment
Submit jobs from command line, UI, or directly from applications
Simple job management, similar to print queue management
Secure MPI
User credentials secured in job scheduler and compute nodes
Microsoft provided stack reduces application/MPI incompatibility issues
Integrated Development Environment
OpenMP Support in Visual Studio, Standard Edition
Parallel Debugger in Visual Studio, Professional Edition
2006
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 and
gridMathematica 2
2006
gridMathematica is the parallel computing environment
comprised of a collection of Mathematica kernels, together
functioning as a single, cohesive unit
gridMathematica offers
Accessible Parallelism
Rapid development and deployment
Unparalleled performance
gridMathematica on Windows Compute Cluster Server
Integration: WCCS is currently the only major system in which
gridMathematica uses the scheduler
Familiarity: WCCS provides a familiar development and
execution environment
Ease of use and deployment: Prescriptive setup procedures,
complete suite of management tools to deploy and manage
cluster infrastructure
Summary
Parallel Computing is here to stay
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 is Microsofts
first step towards makes HPC accessible to all scientists,
engineers, and businesses
Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 delivers
Faster time-to-insight through simplified cluster deployment,
job submission, and status monitoring
Better integration with existing Windows infrastructure allowing
customers to leverage existing technology and skill-sets
Familiar development environment allows developers to write
parallel applications from within the powerful Visual Studio IDE
2006
Resources
Microsoft HPC Web site
http://www.microsoft.com/hpc
Windows CCS Community Site
http://www.windowshpc.net
Windows Server x64 information
http://www.microsoft.com/x64/
Windows Server System information
http://www.microsoft.com/wss/
Get the Facts Web site
http://www.microsoft.com/getthefacts
2006
2006
