Posted on 05/18/2010 1:14:01 PM PDT by reaganaut1
Microsoft has formed a new group to better its share of the market for the most powerful computers in the world. Its plan of attack: make the machines easier to use.
On Monday, Microsoft said it has created an effort called the Technical Computing Initiative focused on the field of high-performance computing, in which dozens to thousands of PCs are lashed together to jointly perform complex calculations beyond the capacity of individual machines. Microsoft has quietly staffed up the group with several hundred employees and is launching a marketing push with a new website touting trends in high-performance computing.
While most people will never come close to needing a high-performance computer, they’re key to the design of a lot of everyday products. They help engineers simulate the impact of wind shear on airplanes and scientists to discover new drugs. Hedge-funds feed mountains of data into them to develop trading strategies.
...
Well, not everyone exactly since high-performance computing applications will still require a lot of technical know-how. Muglia offers an example of how Microsoft plans to make high-performance computing more accessible: Today many financial services firms use the company’s Excel spreadsheet application to develop financial models, but if the firms need the power of a supercomputer to crunch numbers, they often have to write specialized applications in programming languages like Fortran that a much smaller group of users are fluent in.
Microsoft’s Technical Computing group is working on software that will allow a program like Excel to run in parallel on thousands of machines so the application can be used to tackle monster financial computing chores on its own, Muglia says.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.wsj.com ...
Math has always been a problem. ;-)
Absolutely, or just access the entire database from that single hacked computer. No thanks. Computer security is a full time job and hackers still have the advantage. It appears as though hackers will always be one step ahead of those attempting to stop them.
Not quite.
K & E Log Log Decitrig
Um, SETI@home has been doing this since 1999...
http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/sah_about.php
They don’t need no stinking Excel.
“For the life of me I don’t know why they think they have to change networking on every new g-damn version of Windows.”
I hear ya on that one. I got a new computer, running Windows 7 (64 bit), and wanted to transfer some files to it from my old computer, which was running Windows XP. Do you think I could figure out how to let those two see each other so I could use Windows NetWorking between the two of them? And I work with a variety of computers (PCs and Unix boxes) and software for a living. Oh, I got close a couple of times, where one of the machines could at least see the other, but not access the shared drives, but could never actually get it working. I finally gave up on it and just used a thumb drive to transfer my files.
I think the article is about 10 years old, so that sounds about right.
The issue with different versions of Windows is not so much the networking configuration, it’s the security options. It’s much more complex to simply share a folder than it used to be.
Up through XP it wasn’t big deal, but starting with Vista they made things more secure, and hence, more involved (security and convenience are mutually exclusive concepts in computing).
Sounds like Setiathome.com
I wish they would just get rid of all the wizard based setups. Just let us configure the dang stuff. Quit asking me stupid questions like I’m in play school.
I also think they should have quit with “My Computer” but nooo, My Files, My pictures, My music. It’s just gotten hokey.
Microsoft has never been first, never been best, and has a hard time just getting things to run.
Sorry, but I’ll wait for Unix or Apple gurus for innovation.
Meanwhile, I put up with my Microsoft POS OS at work...dreaming of when I can get home and use real computers (Linux and OS-X).
How hard is it to type: \\machine-name\C$ ?
I run Windows 7 on at least 4 machines plus XP, Vista, Home, etc. on others. I had sharing set up with no issues whatsoever.
Getting WCF web services running on Windows Server 2008 R2 was a different matter...
I have a collection of my own. Not so good for accountants though.
Remember the old days when you were wowed by the speed of your new computer? Never seems to happen anymore. Wonder if Moore’s law is being disproven, or if OSs and software are just so bloated now.
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