Microsoft has released its first HPC entry, Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, to manufacturing, anticipating its general availability in August through volume licenses and OEMs and also anticipating it will take back market share from Linux, which currently dominates the space.

It is also anticipating that HPC-style computing is going to become more generic and spread into the enterprise, a factor that could make up for it's being late-to-market.

According to IDC, the HPC market grew 24% last year to a record $9.2 billion. HPC cluster revenues were up 70% between 2004 and 2005 and represented over 50% of HPC revenues in the first quarter of this year. Clusters are supposed to see "substantial" adoption.

Microsoft thinks it stands a shot because its server is supposed to be easy to deploy, operate, manage and integrate. It's also cheaper than the Windows Server 2003 operating system it's based on. Cost could help it go more mainstream. It'll run $469 per node depending on license and volume and development can be done via the ubiquitous Visual Studio 2005.

Microsoft is also salting the bird's tail by putting a lot of money into academic research.

Evaluation copies were circulating at TechEd in Boston this week. Early adopters already include folks like Cornell University's Computational Biology Service Unit, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Northrop Grumman, Queen's University of Belfast, the University of Cincinnati's Genome Research Institute and Virginia Tech's Computational Bioinformatics and Bioimaging Laboratory.

By the end of the year, Microsoft expects Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, IBM and NEC to sell it. (It only runs on 64-bit x86 platforms.)

Meanwhile, Voltaire says it's got a complete Infiniband-based switching solution and software stack for the Compute Cluster Server 2003. It's supposed to enhance performance and scalability and dramatically increase application performance. Voltaire's thinking automotive, aerospace, scientific engineering, geosciences and financial services. HP will have the widgetry as part of its Unified Cluster Portfolio.

(This story was originally published by Client Server News.)