ACCELERATING DATA ANALYSIS WITH HPC AND PRE-BUILT ALGORITHMS

“Until now high-performance computing solutions have been very expensive and often too difficult for many people to use. With Windows HPC Server 2008, we feel confident that the IMSL Libraries will provide increased productivity and minimized complexity.”Dr. Ed Stewart, Product Manager, IMSL Numerical Libraries, Visual Numerics.

PARTNER PROFILE

Visual Numerics® develops leading high-performance, predictive data analysis and visualization tools that have been used in technical, business, and scientific environments for more than three decades.

Regarded as reliable and computer efficient, the functions contained in the Visual Numerics IMSL® Numerical Libraries provide users with the software and technical expertise they need to develop and execute scalable numerical analysis applications.

SITUATION

Regression analysis, equations, data mining, time series analysis, and optimization all involve the manipulation of very large data sets. Complex scientific and mathematical algorithms transform these data sets into meaningful information. Ensuring the reliability of these routines requires considerable time researching, developing, testing, and documenting the core algorithms. Such data-intensive calculations also require a high-performance computing (HPC) platform to process the results and run the algorithms. Traditional open-source HPC solutions are typically complex, and often require specialized IT skills to set up and maintain.

SOLUTION

Windows® HPC Server 2008 combines the power of a 64-bit Windows Server® platform with rich, out-of-the-box functionality to improve the productivity, and reduce the complexity of an HPC environment.

For professionals solving complex mathematical and statistical analysis problems, the IMSL Libraries and Windows HPC Server 2008 combine to help accelerate time to insight with an easy-to-use, cost-effective, and scalable HPC platform.

With the IMSL Libraries, developers and analysts can access the building blocks they need to quickly build a tool that performs advanced analytics, without having to write time-consuming routines from scratch. This helps to eliminate the potential for error while accelerating development time.

When the IMSL Libraries are run on the Windows HPC Server 2008 platform, you

own an HPC platform that is easy to set up and use, and a Windows-based solution for analytics that is cost-effective and scalable.

THE IMSL LIBRARIES

The IMSL Fortran Library and the IMSL C Library are supported on Windows HPC Server 2008. The IMSL C Library is Open Multi-Processing (OpenMP) enabled which allows it to take advantage of mutli-core cluster nodes. The IMSL Fortran Library offers message-passing interface (MPI) enabled routines with support for Microsoft (MS)-MPI, integrated ScaLAPACK support, as well as the ability to utilize vendor BLAS libraries and OpenMP to develop HPC applications. As a result, developers can now combine Microsoft’s HPC architecture and Visual Numerics’ libraries to accelerate application innovation for a range of computationally-intensive research areas, and industries such as oil & gas, financial services, aerospace, life sciences, and meteorology.

Pre-written algorithms can increase return on investment (ROI) and programmer productivity. The IMSL Libraries eliminate the need to write code from scratch; instead, users can make one simple call to a fully tested and documented routine. This allows researchers to spend less time coding and more time analyzing their results, which can help to increase accuracy and precision. With the IMSL Libraries, applications can provide more powerful business analytics than ever before.

The Combination

The IMSL Libraries and Windows HPC Server 2008 combination delivers a significant boost in productivity for customers requiring fast and accurate results from

their data analysis projects. Combining Windows HPC Server 2008 with the tools that build advanced analytics applications can dramatically help extend productivity, increase available time for data analysis, accelerate processing speed, shorten coding and testing requirements, and lower overall research costs. Ultimately, these combined benefits produce results faster. Together, Windows HPC Server 2008 and Visual Numerics are helping analysts turn their data sets into usable knowledge faster by simplifying HPC and making it easy to use.

“Companies such as Visual Numerics are an essential part of bringing high performance computing mainstream. With IMSL Libraries’ ability to leverage Microsoft MPI and Parameter Sweep jobs on Windows HPC Server 2008, Visual Numerics helps ensure that our customers will be able to utilize the power of parallel processing from their desktops with a familiar Windows platform and easy-to-use tools.”

Vince Mendillo, Director of HPC Marketing at Microsoft Corporation.

WINDOWS HPC SERVER 2008

Windows HPC Server 2008 helps enable broader adoption of HPC, and increases productivity by providing numerous end-user, administrator, and developer features and tools, including:

• A rich and integrated end-user experience scaling from the desktop application to the clusters.

• Microsoft management tools that you can utilize to centrally manage the Windows Server infrastructure, including a To-Do List, job scheduler, guided cluster deployment, and cluster health monitoring.

• Support for familiar development tools, such as the native parallel debugger in Microsoft Visual Studio®, to develop and troubleshoot parallel programs, including support for standard interfaces such as OpenMPI, MPI, and Web Services.

FURTHER INFORMATION For more information about Windows HPC Server 2008 and HPC, please visit http://www.microsoft.com/hpc

For more information about Visual Numerics IMSL Libraries, please visit http://www.vni.com/products/imsl

This data sheet is for informational purposes only. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without the express written permission of Microsoft Corporation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

ARCHITECTURE

A typical Windows HPC Server 2008 architecture is shown above. The Windows HPC Server 2008 head node controls and mediates all access to the cluster resources. It also acts as the single point of management, deployment, and job scheduling for the cluster, and can failover to a backup head node in the case of failure.

Windows HPC Server 2008 uses the existing corporate infrastructure and Microsoft Active Directory® for security, account management, and operations management using tools such as Systems Center Operations Manager 2007.

BENEFITS

Reduce coding and testing time. Reduced coding and testing time means that analysts spend much less time than before waiting for results.

Enhance productivity Combining Windows HPC Server 2008 with the tools that build advanced analytics applications can dramatically help increase productivity. Less time spent waiting for results improves productivity.

Utilize existing Windows expertise and IT investments. A Windows-based HPC platform that is cost-effective, easy to deploy and maintain, helps companies utilize their existing Windows-based infrastructure and expertise.

Affordable, accessible, full-featured HPC Windows HPC Server 2008 brings simple deployment, operation and IT integration to HPC at a price point that allows smaller companies and individual departments to successfully deploy HPC applications.

Scalable, highly secure HPC Windows HPC Server 2008 provides the scalability of Windows Server 2008, and includes support for Windows Server 2008 security features.

The To Do List simplifies cluster configuration tasks.