Windows Server: From Midsize to Supercomputers
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News Brief. What do the CX1 and RTM have in common? Windows Server 2008. |
Microsoft bloggers revealed Sept. 15 that Windows Essential Business Server had been released to manufacturing and Cray and Microsoft had collaborated on the CX1.
Microsoft plans to officially launch Essential Business Server in November. The CX1 is available immediately.
"What is the CX1, you ask?" blogged Tina Couch, a Windows Server spokesperson. "It's a compact supercomputer running Windows HPC Server 2008, that's what. It's the most affordable supercomputer Cray has ever offered, with prices starting at $25,000."
Maybe, but I read the fine print. The CX1 also is certified for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Uh-oh.
Regardless of the operating system, the CX1 is a marvel. Data center in a box would be a more appropriate name. It's tiny, 31.04 cm by 44.45 cm by 90.42 cm, but packing up to 16 Intel Xeon processors. When I think 16 processor servers, an air-conditioned server room comes to mind. Cray's brochure shows the supercomputer next to an office desk.
Could the CX1 be that green? I wonder.
The CX1 and Essential Business Server are very channel-friendly products. Microsoft partners should easily be able to sell maintenance, management and other services around them.
My question: Is Essential Business Server even necessary? Storage prices are in free fall (again), microprocessors are increasingly powerful yet less power-hungry (Have you looked at Intel's processor road map recently?) and trends such as parallel computing are pushing up performance (Moore's Law isn't gone, just moved elsewhere). My prediction: In five years, those businesses not virtualized or hosted will be running HPC or something like it.
[Please send your tips or rumors to watchtips at live.com]
Comments (3)
Hopefully the CX1 is representative of what we can buy off the shelf in a couple of years for $2000. Should be killer to run Doom 6 with. Wonder what sort of graphics card you can get with it. Hopefully pretty photo-realistic.
Posted by smist08 | September 16, 2008 7:43 PM
Cray don't really have a clue any more. A supercomputer running Windows has no market. They might be thinking of trying to muscle in at the low end, but Linux is already there, at the low end, the high end, and everything in-between. What are the Windows customers going to do when they discover what the Microsoft tax adds up to, to scale up to few thousand cores?
Posted by Lawrence D'Oliveiro | September 17, 2008 6:13 AM
Find a sucker bump his head, LSE comes to mind.
Posted by n0neXn0ne | September 17, 2008 7:00 AM