University of Southampton
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A blog owned, authored, and maintained by our partner the University Of Southampton's Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing. |
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7/2/2008
The HPC User Group Meeting held in London last week (26 June 2008) was a great success. Over 50 people from industry, academia, and Microsoft (!) came together to discuss the application of Windows HPC, and to see what's coming in Windows HPC Server 2008.
Chaired by Prof Simon Cox, his welcome was followed by several sessions from Microsoft covering WHPCS 2008, PowerShell and Interoperability with UNIX.
Steven Newhouse, from the HPC product group, fielded lots of questions from the audience. This sort of two-way interaction is what the UG is all about!
We then had presentations from Finance firm Towers Perrin on how Windows HPC is changing the insurance business. Electric Cloud gave us a fascinating insight into how HPC is used for building mobile phone software, and how we all benefit from this.
Following lunch and a tour around the Imperial War Museum, and particularly the James Bond special exhibit, we had talks by the two finalists of the Imagine Cup HPC compeitition.These were on protein modelling for drug discovery and traffic modelling.
Anne Trefethen gave us a great overview of the work at the new Oxford e-Research Centre, ranging from ClimatePrediction.NET, to the Optiputer remote microscopy facility. All exciting uses of Microsoft HPC tech.
The intriguing and very entertaining talk entitled 'MS Robots and HPC' showed us a new way of programming concurrently, and is certainly worth a look.
Simon Cox then gave us a glimpse at the future of HPC, describing his Software-as-a-service spin-out company - DezineForce. Delivering engineering optimisation and seamless access to CFD and FEA analysis over the web, this is a great example of SaaS that everyone is talking about.
Finally the Imagine Cup Winners were announced, and the judges were unable to split the candidates from Imperial College and UoWesminister. So well done to both of them, certainly stars of the future in HPC.
Thanks to all of the organisers for helping to make such a great day go so smoothly, and most of all to the participants from all over the country.
We're already looking forward to the next one!
Cheers,
Kenji Takeda
www.mihpc.net 6/11/2008
The 2nd Annual Microsoft HPC User Group meeting will be held on 26th June 2008 at the Imperial War Museum London.
Prof Simon Cox will be chairing this event, which is being hosted by Microsoft UK. We've put together a great programme, and you can find out all about version 2 of Windows HPC Server.
"The day will feature presentations from users and developers, including Microsoft personnel. Community users from engineering, finance, academia and manufacturing will be attending, so it will be an excellent opportunity to network and exchange experiences, ideas and best practices with your peers and with Microsoft." More details and online registration is available on the official MS page here
If you've not been to one of our events yet, rest assured you will find it informative, stimulating and fun :) Just ask anyone else who's come along before!
See you there!!!
Kenji Takeda, Microsoft Institute for HPC @ Southampton
4/13/2008
Just back from visiting the Microsoft HPC team in Shanghai.
Thanks to them for hosting me, particularly George, where I gave a talk 'Redefining HPC: High Productivity Computing'. The team were interested to hear how we're applying Microsoft tools and technologies to all sorts of scientific and engineering problems.
Was great to talk HPC Server 2008 with the folks developing the deployment and management tools. Our experiences so far with the CTP are very positive, particularly from our SysAdmin.
We're really excited by the PowerShell functionality, so thanks to Christina and the team in Shanghai for this great new functionality!
Was great to also visit the Microsoft Institute in Shanghai Jaitong University, and Shanghai Supercomputer Center.
So so long Shanghai, and hope to be back real soon :) 1/17/2008
The deadline for registration is now over, but we'll keep you right up to date on the shortlist and finalists right here. So stay tuned.
The finalists will present their ideas at the 2nd UK Windows HPC User Group meeting in May. We're all really excited about it :) We'll post more details of how to register at the UG meeting here! Welcome to the new Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing @ Southampton blog!
We're continuing to push Windows HPC to the limit, and will keep you up to date on our work right here.
Cheers,
Dr Kenji Takeda
Microsoft Institute for HPC
University of Southampton, UK
1/15/2008As stated in the post above, the original blog is on http://archives.windowshpc.net. For convenience reasons we have decided to migrate this content to our new portal. Below are all entries from the original blog. I have added the name of the author to each entry on the top and edited the posting date to reflect the original date and preserve the order of posts.
Michael Cole
Site adminstrator/Project manager 4/28/2007
posted Saturday, April 28, 2007 2:40 PM by ktakeda | 0 Comments
Thanks to the 70+ participants for making the world's first CCS User Group meeting at Microsoft UK HQ such a success. An amazing 95% turnout, which is unheard of for such a gathering, especially for a sunny Friday! Simon Cox, of the Southampton Institute for HPC, hosted the show, which covered everything from financial applications, real-world grid deployment, to improving reliability of aircraft engines, and Excel on CCS.
Special thank sto Gordon Frazer, MD of Microsoft UK, for spending time with us and fielding a host of interesting quesrtions on CCS, Vista and all things Microsoft. The assembled crowd of users, OEMs and ISVs certainly didn't give him an easy time!
Of great interest was the discussion on CCS version 2, led by Ryan Waite and John Vert, who flew out to the UK from Redmond. Also thanks to Jeff Wierer for enlightening us on the world of High performance Excel Services - fascinating!
For a couple of pics of the event, check out Mike Pallot's HPC & Search Blog here.
Stay posted here for more community activity as it evolves :) 2/13/2007
posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:39 AM by ktakeda | 0 Comments
Today sees the announcement of a £17.4m CFMS UK project to enhance computer simulation productivity in aerospace, motorsports and marine sectors. The Southampton Institute for HPC is a partner, working with Microsoft to develop key architecture, tools and technologies to radically improve the engineering experience.
The consortium is led by Airbus and includes the Aircraft Research Association, BAE Systems, BMT Fluid Mechanics Limited, Eurostep, Frazer-Nash Consultancy (representing DML Group), Hewlett-Packard, IT Innovation, MBDA, Microsoft, PCA Engineers, Quadrics, QinetiQ, Rolls-Royce, AgustaWestland, Williams F1 and University of Southampton.
Read the full press release @ http://www.gnn.gov.uk/Content/Detail.asp?ReleaseID=263399&NewsAreaID=2
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posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:16 AM by ktakeda | 0 Comments
Another November, another Supercomputing conference (SC'06). This year we were in Tampa, Florida, a nice change from grey and rainy Southampton. It certainly was hot, in the 80s Fahrenheit, but the thunderstorms are pretty torrential too!
We were honoured to be part of the huge Microsoft stand again, which is very exciting as Windows Compute Cluster Server is now a real product. Two of our videos were running on the big Plasma screen in between booth talks. The folks opposite on the Pacific Nortwest Labs stand now know more than they ever wanted to about our BAE Systems CFD project, and the Smallpeice Trust 'Computers in Engineering' course we ran in July!
This year our demo was pretty cool, pushing the .NET 3 Framework, using Windows Presentation Foundation, Windows Communication Foundation, and Globus 2 accessing Windows Compute Cluster. We were performing whole Earth System simulations (atmosphere + ocean) to investigate scenarios of the Gulf Stream switching on and off. Running all of this from inside a web browser, with WPF, was one of the first times anyone had seen such Web 2.0 technology being used in anger - even the Microsoft folks ;)
I'll post more about the demo on our MIHPC site (www.mihpc.net) soon!
My colleague, Simon Cox, had some fun cruising around Tampa showing how supercomputing affects our everyday lives. Check out the video at www.winhpc.org .
posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:38 AM by ktakeda | 0 Comments |
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Well, November 9th was an interesting day... A quick trip to Brussels to the Microsoft Executive Briefing Centre for the Microsoft Research EU Innovation Day 2006. These have been running for a few years now, and it is an opportunity for Microsoft to show off all of the funky research they are doing in Europe and around the world!
This year we were invited to showcase the work we're doing in the Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing (www.mihpc.net).
There were lots of people rushing around, as not only was Bill Gates coming to give a keynote speech, but so was the EU President, Matti Vanhanen. Their speeches were very interesting, discussing why innovation in Europe is not as fruitful as in other regions, and what can be done to help.
The exhibition was fascinating, you can read more about it on the website...
http://www.euinnovationday.com/
For piccies of the event, go straight here... http://www.eventattitude.net/innovationday
posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 2:34 AM by ktakeda | 0 Comments |
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Can you build a Windows supercomputer from parts and run a parallel Fluent CFD calculation for an airliner in a day?
The HPC Institute at Southampton set this challenge to a dozen 17 year olds, and they did it! Not only that, they flew their designs in Microsoft Flight Simulator too :)
See the video to find out more:
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~ktakeda/temp/2305_Smallpeice_Trust_02.10.06.wmv
This residential course at Southampton was run by the Smallpeice Trust, and was sponsored by Microsoft Research Cambridge. Powered by Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, of course!
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