MS makes supercomputing move

Bill Gates will announce Microsoft`s foray into the world of supercomputing, though its first operating system for computer clusters remains in beta testing, reports CNet.

Gates will speak at the SC05 supercomputing conference, a first for Microsoft, where he will announce that the company has entered Beta-2 testing of its Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.

The product consists of a cluster-optimised version of the OS as well as software for job scheduling and other tasks. It is scheduled for release in final form in the first half of next year.

Microsoft says it has seen a shift where such products expand beyond a niche market into more and more businesses. Microsoft is pitching its tools as on par with the performance of Linux. The company also claims its tools are easier to manage and integrate with the rest of a corporate computing environment.

Microsoft has labelled Sony`s controversial anti-piracy CD software as spyware, reports the BBC.. The software giant said the XCP copy protection system counted as malicious software under the rules it uses to define what Windows should be protected against.

It is planning to include detection and removal tools for XCP in its weekly update to its anti-spyware software. The news came as Sony BMG suspended production of CDs that use XCP.

Microsoft`s decision to label the XCP system spyware was revealed on the blog maintained by the software maker`s anti-malware team. Writing in the blog, Jason Garms, a senior manager at MS said the XCP software qualified as spyware under the "objective criteria" Microsoft uses to assess potentially malicious programs.

Cisco Systems officially entered the wireless mesh networking space today, lagging its competitors technologically but adding significant validation to a nascent market, reports eWeek.

As expected, the networking giant launched the Aironet 1500 Series access point. Designed for outdoor deployments on rooftops or poles, the 1500 Series can automatically set itself up to operate within a mesh network, so that IT administrators don`t have to reset anything if there is a power outage.

The Register reports that SGI won`t back down from its Linux on Itanium charge. In fact, SGI next year will release the Altix 4000, a monster of a machine that uses new blade server components and supports up 128TB of memory.

The Altix 4000 will start shipping in the first quarter of 2006 and support both Intel`s current "Madison" Itanic chip and the upcoming dual-core "Montecito". The box will run standard versions of Red Hat and Novell Suse Linux along with SGI`s Reconfigurable Application Specific Computing (RASC) technology.