27 June 2007

HP and Microsoft have extended their worldwide sales and marketing agreement for the high performance computing (HPC) market.

The agreement unites them in driving high-performance computing into the mass market, by delivering supercomputing clusters that are easier to deploy, support and manage for enterprise and mid-market customers.

The extension of the alliance entails a multimillion dollar investment by both HP and Microsoft, and includes HP selling Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server (CCS) 2003 direct and via reseller channels as part of the HP Unified Cluster Portfolio. The portfolio is supported by HP ProLiant servers, HP BladeSystem and HP Cluster platforms.

"High-performance computing is poised for continued growth, averaging over 20 per cent a year for the last four years, with HPC standards-based clusters growing at even higher rates. End-users are looking for easy-to-use systems and will likely go with vendors that can provide an easy transition from their desktop to HPC servers," said Earl Joseph, program vice president of IDC, an industry analyst firm.

HP enhancements to Windows CCS include custom installation scripts and documentation that streamline deployment. The optional HP message passing interface and InfiniBand drivers offer increased scalability and performance in applications that require high-speed, low-latency communications. Using HP's custom installation kit for Windows CCS, a customer can realistically expect to have a 64-node cluster deployed and running within two hours.

As part of the alliance, HP and Microsoft have established technology centers in Houston and Grenoble, France, for customers and independent software vendors. The technology centres provide a venue for benchmarking, testing and validating applications on HP servers, based on AMD and Intel processors running Windows CCS.

HP and Microsoft are also teaming up with ANSYS to deliver a portfolio of computer aided engineering applications as part of a security-enhanced Windows HPC solution.

Microsoft and ANSYS have also agreed on worldwide sales and marketing initiatives that focus on joint solutions for the manufacturing industry. ANSYS worked through the Microsoft and HP technology centre to port, performance-tune and conduct benchmarks with its ANSYS 11 and FLUENT 6.3 CAE applications, and the 64-bit Windows Server platform.

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