Reed's Ruminations: The Past, Present, and Future
Reflections on science, technology, and computing — leavened by personal experience
Category: Microsoft
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Seeding The Clouds
I came to Microsoft to lead a new research initiative in cloud computing, one that complements our production data center infrastructure and our nascent Azure cloud software platform. You can read the press release and the web site for the official story. What follows is my personal perspective.
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A Few Thoughts on the Stimulus Package
Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, recently spoke to the U.S. House Democratic Caucus Retreat. Although you can read the complete speech, I would like to highlight a few excerpts that emphasize Microsoft’s strong support for innovation and the importance of continued investment in basic research.
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Reflections on SC08
“Cloud” was undoubtedly the buzz word of the conference. Like the word Grid in the past, cloud is now a tabula rasa on which research groups and companies are projecting their own definitions and spins. I was also pleased that HPCWire awarded its Editor’s Choice Award for best industry/government collaboration to the Microsoft/Intel Universal Parallel…
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Beyond The Azure Blue
From the first day I arrived at Microsoft, my academic colleagues have been asking me about Microsoft’s strategy for cloud computing and when (or if) there would be public announcements. At our Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft announced Azure, our cloud computing platform, with on-demand compute and storage to host, scale and manage Internet or…
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Showing Up and Two Corollaries
“Eighty to ninety percent of life is showing up.” The line has been variously attributed to Yogi Berra, Woody Allen or even an anonymous wag. At the recent Cetraro meeting on High-Performance Computing and Grids, Miron Livny extended the “show up and see what happens” maxim by offering a corollary, “Show up and avoid doing…
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Salishan, Exascale and Heterogeneous Multicore
This year, Adolfy Hoisie (LANL) asked me to give the after dinner presentation, which is normally the evening of the second day. An after dinner talk is always fraught with danger, as the desired attributes are brevity, humor, brevity and insight. Oh, and did I mention brevity? Such events are especially challenging when the after…