Microsoft teams with Barcelona for supercomputing research

Computer architecture experts at BSC have teamed up with computer scientists at Microsoft Research Cambridge in the UK to look at new ways of optimising the growing challenges and opportunities presented by massively parallel processing.

The researchers explained that the rapid growth of multi-core processor architectures makes it possible to deliver enormous computational power on a single chip.

However, optimising the design and interaction of hardware and software architectures to take advantage of the new computing power will require tight integration across the industry.

"To optimise the designs and interactions of multi-core processors and software, we need to start from parallel programming," said Mateo Valero, director of the BSC.

"The way to deal with this multi-core architecture challenge is to bring together computer architects and programming language experts."

The BSC-Microsoft Research Centre hopes to change the traditional model in which software development is conditioned by hardware design, instead allowing the software requirements to drive hardware development.

"Partnerships like this help us to reach our goal of supporting the global research community and assisting researchers and scientists to address some of the toughest societal and technological challenges," said Tony Hey, corporate vice president of external research at Microsoft Research.

Microsoft hopes that the joint venture will combine the respective areas of expertise of both groups to "address the challenges of writing trustworthy software for multi-core processors".