Application models for Windows HPC Server 2008

There are two application models that you could use to write parallel programs that run on a Window HPC Server 2008 cluster.The first is the more classical MPI model. This model has been used for quite some time not only on the Windows platform but also on various other platforms like Linux and flavors of BSD. However in the 2008 version of Windows HPC Server some nice improvements were made that allow for 30% increase in effectiveness compared to the previous version (which I think was named Windows Compute Cluster 2003) which is very impressive.

If you want to know more about the MPI application model I recommend that you take a look at the Windows HPC Server 2008 - Using MS-MPI white paper and also watch that video on channel 9.

There is also the newly introduced WCF based, SOA application model which allows you to write your parallel applications using your favorite managed language (like for example C#) and WCF in Visual Studio.

Again, if you want to know more you can take a look at the Overview of Service-Oriented Architecture Programming Model and Runtime System for Windows HPC Server 2008 white paper and watch this video at channel 9.

There are also other white papers and more videos.

But how to decide which of the two models to use? Besides, of course your preference of C# over C, or WCF over MPI. Well, if your parallel algorithms are such that the worker processes need to communicate with one another you will most probably need to use the MPI model. However, if they are of the embarrassingly parallel kind you could take advantage of the new SOA model.