IBM Mainframe

Despite the current dominance of Unix and Linux in supercomputers, Bill Gates predicted, in a speech yesterday at the Supercomputing 2005 conference in Seattle, that relatively cheap supercomputers will become common within the next few years and will be running a version of Microsoft's cluster operating system.

"What we see as a key trend here is that we will have supercomputers of all sizes, including ones that will cost less than $10,000 and be able to sit at your desk or in a department," Gates said.

Gates said that supercomputers, once considered massive mainframe machines that only researchers, a few companies and governments could afford, are becoming smaller and cheaper to the point where a clustered supercomputer system could be built for as little as $10,000.

The market for computer clusters built on Intel Corp.'s "x86" microprocessors used in more than 90 percent of PCs is growing at 15 to 20 percent per year, faster than the 11 percent growth in the PC market, and is expected to swell to as many as 300,000 installed machines by the end of the decade, Microsoft said.

To tap into that growth and compete against Linux -- the freely available operating system that is also being used to create clustered computer systems -- Microsoft is set to launch Computer Cluster Server in the first half of 2006. The latest beta, or test version, of the software was released Tuesday.

Overall, Gates' message proved a bit boring. He mentioned that supercomputers do important things and will be more important in the coming years because we face important issues. Microsoft, of course, will have a tough time cracking into this important work since Linux is the OS of choice for the supercomputer crowd.

Gates does seem to be on the right track though as far as the personal clusters are concerned. Orion Multisystems already makes a super-charged 96-processor deskside cluster than can plug into a standard wall outlet. Researchers have been seeking such machines which will let them crank away at projects right in their labs and transfer bigger jobs to the giant clusters that require special cooling systems and have higher power requirements.

"We need an approach here that scales from the smallest supercomputer up to the very largest," Gates said.

Microsoft plans to tie its other productivity, database and workflow applications into the cluster OS over time. This would make it possible for researchers to set up projects and then easily see relevant information about the data they were collecting and how other scientists were using the information. Apparently, RSS feeds are very important in this vision, which gives you some idea of how Microsoft may fail in the supercomputing space.

The 9,000-person Supercomputing crowd appeared enthralled with Gates and peppered him with probing questions following the keynote. Gates was forced to address his opinions on global warming and supercomputing security.

For decades, supercomputing has been the domain of "the few with specialized custom hardware and software systems," Microsoft senior vice president Bob Muglia said recently at a Microsoft IT Forum 2005 in Barcelona, Spain.

"What's needed now are software technologies that interconnect computing systems, people and data to produce more rapid answers to the questions of science, and to help researchers use computation in the most effective manner," Muglia said