An Introduction

I've been at Microsoft since 1996 in various roles on product teams and in consulting. These days I work pretty much full time assisting HPC ISVs who are trying to get their applications onto Windows Compute Cluster Server. Recently, I've also begun to work with some solution integrators to assist them in preparing and testing clusters for deployment. The Microsoft HPC product team has graciously invited me to share some of my experiences in this blog. I'll try to keep the short bits in the main forums and the more long-winded stuff here.

Microsoft's entry into this space is recent, but the business of high performance computing has a long history. I met a consultant recently whose business card boasted: "34 years of HPC experience." I found it simultaneously amusing and daunting. In some sense, that 34-year claim certainly can be valid, but the landscape of what we call high performance computing has changed dramatically in 34 years.

My goal is to share some common threads, challenges, and hopefully a few solutions based that I'm seeing in the field, so I probably won't mention something unless I think it's important to quite a few of our partners. I look forward to your feedback!