Where is the Cluster? Microsoft HPC at SC05

I'm sitting in the overflow room for the Bill Gates Keynote at Supercomputing '05 (SC05). Odd, his talk is being given in a medium sized room, I am told they have bigger rooms in the convention center. Ah, but why risk empty seats. First, let me say how bazaar this is. Bill Gates at SC, like the CEO of Pepsi addressing the Coke shareholders meeting, no it is worse, it is like Terrel Owens explaining the word humble to the Dali Lama. The term non sequitur comes to mind.

At first, I thought, why go. What could Bill Gates possibly tell the people who have pioneered high performance computing. But then, my curiosity got the better or me. You know, mixing unknowns. Alchemy is interesting. New science if you will.

Some history may be helpful. High Performance Computing (HPC) has always been a UNIX market. Why? A real well-engineered Operating System was needed. HPC pushes the limits of everything. More interesting is how Linux, with its "Plug and Play" proposition for UNIX users, has literally taken over the HPC market.

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