Advancements in high-performance computing are on the minds of thousands of IT professionals and scientists attending conferences around the world today. Bob Muglia, senior vice president, Microsoft Server and Tools Business, talked about Microsoft’s commitment to high performance computing in his keynote address in Barcelona at the Microsoft IT Forum 2005, the company’s annual infrastructure conference. Meanwhile, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates, in a keynote address at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle today, will describe how innovations in high-performance computing will improve global collaboration by connecting scientists and researchers, computation resources and data, all of which can help reduce time to insight and discovery.

In conjunction with today's keynotes, Microsoft also announced the Beta 2 release of Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, which is designed to accelerate time to insight by providing an integrated, easy to use and manageable high performance computing solution. The company also said it would invest in helping to establish 10 Institutes for High Performance Computing at key universities worldwide. Both developments signal Microsoft’s entry into the high-performance computing (HPC) market.

To learn more about Microsoft’s high performance computing strategy, PressPass spoke last week with Muglia.