The delaying of the Windows version for supercomputers is not surprising. Microsoft has many initial bugs so the setback might actually be for the good. With the growth of technology, high performance computers and supercomputers are a dime a dozen. Microsoft needs to be ready and have a good version before it is unleashed for use. Right now the release has been pushed back until the beginning of next year. It was recently planned for the end of 2005 but Microsoft decided to hold it back so some changes could be made. More about this below.

Windows Server 2003, Compute Cluster Edition, will be aimed at "personal" and departmental applications, not the "extreme scale-up" applications often associated with supercomputing, according to Microsoft. The company released a software development kit for Compute Cluster Edition, previously known as the Windows Server 2003, High-Performance Computing Edition, late last year. The kit lets partners tune applications to run in the Windows environment. A refreshed toolkit will ship this summer, Microsoft says. Compute Cluster Edition is based on Windows Server 2003 and will support high-performance hardware and industry standards such as MPI-2 and RDMA over Ethernet and Infiniband, Microsoft said last fall. The system will include an integrated job scheduler and cluster resource management.[via informationweek]