High-end Windows Server 2008 launch on tap

Launch-happy Microsoft is set to roll out yet another enterprise product this month: Windows HPC 2008 Server.

The official date for the rollout is September 22. The venue: The 2008 "High Performance on Wall Street" conference in New York.

HPC stands for high-performance computing. HPC 2008 Server is the successor to Microsoft's Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. Among the product's features Microsoft has been touting for the past year: new high-speed networking, scalable cluster management tools, advanced failover capabilities, a service oriented architecture (SOA) job scheduler, and support for partners’ clustered file systems.

Microsoft released Beta 1 of HPC 2008 Server in November 2007. In June 2008, Microsoft delivered the near-final release candidate test build of the highest end SKU in its Windows Server 2008 line-up.

Microsoft's most formidable competitor in the HPC space is Linux. Research organizations and Wall Street firms are among some of the biggest users of HPC technology.