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By Mel Duvall
Microsoft and Cray have announced they plan to work together on cloud computing systems, in what represents an interesting partnership between the king of supercomputers and the undisputed leader in personal computer software.
The companies announced that they have formed a partnership whereby Cray’s custom engineering group will work with Microsoft Research to explore and prototype cloud computing infrastructures.
The objective of the partnership is to design a supercomputing architecture that would “dramatically lower the total cost of ownership for cloud computing data centers.” Cray will design a system infrastructure that combines its expertise in supercomputing systems with the latest breakthroughs in high-density packaging and cooling technologies.
“This is an ideal project for our custom engineering group as it allows us to leverage our company’s intellectual property in system design, and most specifically, packaging and system infrastructure,” Chuck Morreale, Cray’s vice president of custom engineering, said in a statement.
Cray’s custom engineering group normally designs and delivers customized computing, data management and consulting solutions to the specifications of an individual customer. Cray said the initiative marks the engineering group’s first foray into the commercial market.
Microsoft and Cray hope to take on one of the most damaging aspects of the boom in data centers -- an insatiable appetite for electricity. Christian Belady, Microsoft’s director of hardware architecture in the extreme computing group, said the company is hoping to accelerate system designs for next-generation data centers.
“Ultimately, our mission is to dramatically reduce total cost of ownership, while significantly boosting performance,” he said.
It has been a busy couple of weeks for Microsoft on the cloud computing front. In a speech to computer science students at the University of Washington on March 4, Ballmer went so far as to say the company was betting its future on the cloud.
Ballmer told the students about 70 percent of the company’s staff is now working on some aspect of cloud computing. “A year from now, that will be 90 percent,” he said.
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