UAEU Deploys Microsoft HPC Server 2008

MicrosoftMicrosoft, yesterday, announced that the United Arab Emirates University [UAEU] has deployed the Microsoft HPC Server 2008 platform.  This marks the first academic institution in the Gulf to deploy it for HPC.  The major goal of the deployment is for undergraduate teaching activities in a dedicated lab within the College of Information Technology [CIT].

Our collaboration with Microsoft is part of the United Arab Emirates University’s commitment to providing students with the highest levels of technical and professional training programs,” said Dr Eyad Abed, Dean of the College of Information Technology at UAEU.“An important part of that vision is creating an advanced learning environment, by having a powerful technology infrastructure that can be integrated into our curriculum.

The first pieces of the lab hardware include 20 compute nodes.  In the next phase, the university will deploy 100 additional servers.  Eventually, the lab will be utilized to instruct industrial HPC users from sectors such as Oil and Gas, Finance and Manufacturing.

The United Arab Emirates University is a strategic partner for Microsoft and this investment reflects their commitment to providing world class technology infrastructure,” said Charbel Fakhoury, General Manager, Microsoft Gulf.“Windows HPC Server 2008 makes supercomputing more accessible to end users by allowing them to harness computing power through a familiar Windows desktop environment. With Windows HPC Server 2008, Microsoft has made huge advances in performance and scaling that give users a more productive computing environment.”

Outside of the “first-in-the-Gulf” news, this is an interesting HPC deployment.  The overall goal of the lab is as a teaching tool, not as a core computational resource.  This concept is much different than the traditional HPC procurement.

For more info, read the full article here.

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