The company is currently offering Windows HPC Server, which delivers high-performance computing power on a cluster level and the company is planning to release a new version this fall with more advanced capabilities. For example, the new version will automatically bring unused PC resources into the cluster during off-hours in the evening to tackle a high-performance computing problem, Hilf explains.

Leveraging its Azure cloud computing platform to deliver High Performance Compute cycles in the cloud to augment on-premise systems and deliver "just in time" processing.

Developing new tools that will simplify parallel software development. Hilf says parallel programs are extremely difficult to write, test and debug, and Microsoft is committed to building new tools that will help automate and simplify the process of writing parallel programs that will scale from the desktop, to the cluster to the cloud. "The parallelism pressure has already started in a significant way," he explains. "Simplified tools will allow those serial developers to exploit parallel development. We see this opening up those things that were previously only relegated to high-end customers to a broader set of users."

Provide new development tools and run-time platforms that will allow applications or even engineering models to seamlessly scale from multicore PCs to multi-server clusters to a multi-instance cloud environment, depending on the need for compute power. This idea of flexibility and choice between running in a client, cluster or cloud environment is where Microsoft really sees its key differentiation, Hilf says. Consider the development of an aircraft, for example. With the Microsoft High Performance Computing vision, one or two variables involved in a wing design could be simulated on a workstation, while the relationship of the wing to the entire fuselage could be explored on the cluster and a simulation of the entire aircraft across a huge amount of weather or physics data could leverage the capacity of the cloud for computation. "To do that now, requires rewriting the application at every step," Hilf says. In the Microsoft vision, the parallel computing run-time platforms would allow the model or application to take advantage of whatever resources beneath it without having to change the application, he explains.