PeakStream puts apps development on Windows

HPC on a PC

By Martin Banks • Get more from this author

Posted in Developer, 29th March 2007 11:47 GMT

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High Performance Computing (HPC) may for many developers reside at the far distant end of their everyday event horizon, but both the hardware and software technologies involved continue to creep into the mainstream of information processing.

For the everyday developer, however, getting to grips with exploiting that software technology can mean an obligation to learn several new skills. Wouldn't it be nicer if there was a development environment that was familiar, for example something that ran on Windows and a PC?

That looks like becoming the trend if HPC applications provider, PeakStream, has any say in things. Aware that the move towards multi-core x86-based processors is now central to most HPC systems, and also at the heart of most new PC workstations, the company has decided to exploit the commonality by producing an applications development workstation suite that runs on Windows.

This combines a set of Math libraries in C/C++ with an optimising runtime and a set of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 tool extensions. The company reckons this is the first commercial grade Windows-based application platform to offer a high-level API.

One of its advantages is that it can insulate code from low-level hardware, which means that developed code can be ported to future hardware platforms without recoding. To date, most HPC applications development tools have been geared to specific hardware implementations or interfaces, so PeakStream is hoping to gain traction with developers because code developed on the workstation can scale across emerging multi-core processors and future highly parallel systems.

A beta of the workstation is available here.®

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