Microsoft to demo new cloud-computing advances at research showcase
Natural-user-interface projects like the Mobile Surface and Project Gustav are hardly the only new research projects that will be on display at Microsoft's TechFest 2010 research showcase this week. The company also will be showing off a number of cloud-computing advances it has been honing in its research labs.
A few of these TechFest 2010 highlights in this area, which I unearthed on the company's Web site:
Cloud Mouse: A joint project from MSR Asia and MSR Cambridge, the Cloud Mouse is a new "interaction device" for cloud computing. It sounds like another natural-user-interface (NUI)-type project that deals with "new interaction metaphors" and new ways of handling the input/output of data.
There aren't many details posted yet, but here's a bit from the cloud mouse description on the MSR site:
"Every user will have one. It will be a secure key to every user’s cloud data. And, with six degrees of freedom and with tactile feedback, the cloud mouse will enable users to orchestrate, interact with, and engage with their data as if they were inside the cloud."
Cloud Faster: Two projects are part of this initiative, one called "Application Proxies at the Edge," (Wide-area TCP) and the other, "DCTCP Transport Optimization for Datacenters." What's interesting to me about these projects is they are the result of collaborations between the Bing and Windows Core Operating System Networking team. Microsoft is planning to demo how its protocol tweaking will improve the performance of Bing Web sites, according to the write-up on the research site.
There's a bit more information which isn't hidden (at least not at the moment) on the MSR Web site:
"To make cloud computing work, we must make applications run substantially faster, both over the Internet and within data centers. Our measurements of real applications show that today's protocols fall short, leading to slow page-load times across the Internet and congestion collapses inside the data center. We have developed a new suite of architectures and protocols that boost performance and the robustness of communications to overcome these problems."
Anyone have any guesses as to how these cloud projects might look if/when they are ever commercialized, based on these early snippets of information?
Update (March 2): In Microsoft Research other cloud-computing news, Microsoft and Cray Computer announced they plan to collaborate on "a prototype system that aims to significantly lower the cost of running cloud-computing systems by combining "super efficient power delivery, high-density packaging and innovative cooling technologies," according to TechFlash. This isn't the first collaboration between Microsoft and Cray; the pair announced plans for a $25,000 supercomputer running the HPC SKU of Windows Server 2008 a couple of years ago.