September 22nd, 2009
Microsoft buys desktop parallel-computing software maker ISC
Microsoft has purchased the assets of Interactive Supercomputing (ISC), a desktop parallel-computing vendor, according to a blog post on the Windows Server Division Weblog.
The move fits in with Microsoft’s continued efforts to build up its high-performance server capabilities so as to better take on Linux in that market. It also fits with Microsoft’s larger Server and Tools and research projects to make parallel programming easier.
Microsoft has a wide variety of ongoing projects in the parallel/distributed computing space, from its Axum concurrent-computing language, to the Parallel FX extenions to the .Net Framework. Earlier this year, Microsoft formed a new eXtreme Computing Group, headed by supercomputing expert Dan Reed, that is focused on exascale computing.
According to the Windows Server post, dated September 21, from Kyril Faenov General Manager, High Performance & Parallel Computing Technologies:
“ISC’s products and technology enable faster prototyping, iteration, and deployment of large-scale parallel solutions, which is well aligned with our vision of making high performance computing and parallel computing easier, both on the desktop and in the cluster.”
Faenov said in the post that Microsoft recently began planning to integrate ISC technologies into future versions of unnamed Microsoft products and that Microsoft will provide more details “over the coming months.” In the short term, Microsoft will be providing support for ISC’s current Star_P customers, he said.
The CEO of ISC, Bill Blake, will be bringing the ISC team to work at Microsoft’s New England Research & Development Center in Cambridge, MA.
PEHub reported yesterday that Microsoft had purchased ISC, but Microsoft declined to confirm that report.
PEHub noted that ISC’s P-Star is “technical computing software that enables users to code computing problems on their desktops using familiar mathematical software such as MATLAB and Python, and run them instantly and interactively on parallel high-performance computers (HPCs).”
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