Microsoft launches Technical Computing Initiative 2.0

Microsoft is creating a new Technical Computing Group, which company officials unveiled on May 17, and is launching (again) a corporate Technical Computing Initiative.

(I say "again" because Microsoft launched a Technical Computing Initiative in 2004, as documented in this 2007 Microsoft Research Technical Computing white paper.)

The new group falls under Bob Muglia, who is President of Microsoft's Server and Tools business, but will work closely with various groups in Microsoft Research, company officials said. The three areas of focus of the group and the broader initiative will be cloud, parallel-programming and new technical computing tools. There is a new technical computing community Web site, www.modelingtheworld.com, launching as part of the effort.

If you're interested in particulars regarding the technical tools, here's what the Softies are saying (via a spokesperson):

"Windows HPC (High Performance Computing) Server 2008 and all of the capabilities in Visual Studio 2010 that allow developers to take advantage of parallelism (e.g., parallel profiler and debugger and the ConcRT (concurrent) runtime are examples of technology the Technical Computing group has already delivered. In the future we’ll be delivering Technical Computing services on top of Azure that will integrate with desktop applications from Microsoft and partners."

Microsoft already has been working on all of these areas. A couple of months ago, the Microsoft Research team announced it was working with the National Science Foundation to make cloud resources available to engineers and scientists, for example. Last year, Microsoft created a new eXtreme Computing Group, which was focused on applying exascale computing technologies. And the Softies have been working on new parallel-processing and multi-core tools and techniques for the past couple of years.

Today's announcement builds on these existing initiatives, Microsoft officials said.