Check out Ryan Waite's interview on the "How Software Is Built" blog.

https://howsoftwareisbuilt.com/2007/07/22/interview-with-ryan-waite/

In this interview, Ryan Waite, Group Program Manager for High-Performance Computing at Microsoft talks about:

o    Microsoft’s entry into the High Performance Computing area.

o    Microsoft’s support of the open source Message Passing Interface (MPI).

o    MPI has become bloated, and there’s no usability data (like there is with Microsoft Office) to indicate what should be deprecated.

o    At Microsoft, select customers help shape the features for the next product release.

o    Microsoft has always focused on ease of use, simplified administration, and uncomplicated setup. HPC is no different.

o    Instrumentation helps find reliability issues. If partners are affecting reliability (with unstable drivers, for example) certification helps raise the bar.

o    Parallel programming is now the only way to do more computation in the same amount of time. Processors just are getting faster like they used to.

o    It’s easier for open source to be incremental. Proprietary software has to make radical changes.

o    Hard drives + overnight shipping = really high bandwidth.