Microsoft has launched an effort to produce a version of Windows for high-performance computing, a move seen as a direct attack on a Linux stronghold. High-performance computing once required massive, expensive, exotic machines from companies such as Cray, but the field is being remade by the arrival of clusters of low-end machines. While the trend could be considered an opportunity for Microsoft, which has long been the leading operating system company, Linux has actually become the favored software used on these clusters.
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