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Impact

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Today is one of the most important days for 64-bit computing for our company and perhaps industry-wide. At 2 major industry events Microsoft Executives outlined our company’s transition to 64-bit.

  • Bill Gates announced the availability of Beta 2 of Windows Compute Cluster Solution at SC|05

  • Bob Muglia outlined the 64-bit product roadmap for SBS, E12, Longhorn Server etc at ITforum

Bill Gates and Bob Muglia made it very clear today; the Microsoft future is 64-bit. Or in Bob’s own words from PDC 05: “As we move forward … I really think of 32-bit as legacy. We're going to be compatible and support that legacy, but the future is all 64-bit”.

This will certainy have a huge impact on the developer community. Help is available: www.64advantage.com.

Supercomputing 2005. This year we have the biggest presence at a Supercomputing event ever. This morning the event was kicked off by a keynote presentation by Bill Gates. The relevance for 64-bit: Windows Compute Cluster Solution (CCS) will be the first Windows operating system exclusively available on 64-bit (x64).
In his keynote, Bill Gates touches the following important aspects:
Computing is fast becoming an accepted third pillar of science and engineering (in addition to theory/design and experiments). With increasing amounts of data and the growing need for collaboration, HPC is now playing a much greater role in the scientific workflow.
Scientists and engineers want to spend more time conducting breakthrough research and less time building and maintaining computing infrastructure. The coming era is one of ‘personal supercomputing’ – scientists working within their familiar desktop environment interacting seamlessly and transparently with supercomputing resources. This implies compute clusters that are (a) easy to deploy and manage and (b) well integrated into the desktop environment. Microsoft is committed to enabling this vision through our products and our partnerships with academia and other commercial entities.
Resources:

Press release for SC|05.
Q&A: Microsoft Announces Strategy for HPC
Microsoft at SC|05; coverage in the Seattle PI
SC|05 Microsoft Virtual Pressroom
CCS announcement at ITforum
Microsoft HPC website

ITforum 2005 is the Microsoft annual infrastructure conference designed for IT professionals. Bob Muglia, who was the keynote speaker this morning in Barcelona, made several product announcements during his address. His presentation can be downloaded here. My favorite slide is No 15. Below in summary the 64-bit related announcements.

As part of its commitment to 64-bit computing, Microsoft has been delivering products that are optimized for 64-bit, including the newly released SQL Server™ 2005, Visual Studio® 2005 and Virtual Server 2005 R2.
To help customers take full advantage of the power of 64-bit computing, products including Microsoft® Exchange Server “12,” Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, Windows Server™ “Longhorn” Small Business Server, and Microsoft’s infrastructure solution for midsize businesses, code-named “Centro,” will be exclusively 64-bit and optimized for x64 hardware. In a future update release to Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Server “Longhorn” operating system, code-named Windows Server “Longhorn” R2, customers will see the complete transition to 64-bit-only hardware, while still benefiting from 32-bit and 64-bit application compatibility.
For the highest-scale application and database workloads, Windows Server on 64-bit Itanium-based systems will continue to be the premier choice for customers for years to come.
Resources:

64-bit reference quotes
Later the speech transcripts and more will be available on the press website of ITforum.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    November 17, 2005
    > His presentation can be downloaded here

    Not yet!
  • Anonymous
    November 24, 2005
    Did he say "Itanium" and "years to come" in one sentence?

    ROFL

    Even our Mainframe guys call it the Itanic..It's slow, VERY expensive and just, you know, dead...