APPLICATIONS

Following strong demand from the high-performance-computing community for Mathematica 6, Wolfram Research has launched Parallel Computing Toolkit 2.1--an optimized parallel solution for anyone with access to Mathematica and more than one processor. Now compatible with Mathematica 6, Parallel Computing Toolkit is the ideal bridge for engineers, scientists, and analysts working on multiprocessor-based product design and problem solving. The application package leverages Mathematica's revolutionary global computing environment by adding powerful programming primitives for writing and controlling parallel Mathematica programs as well as high-level commands for common parallel operations. The new version also continues support for Mathematica 5.2 remote kernel processes. "Technical computing is crucial to the many discoveries that impact our quality of life, and most sciences are quickly becoming computational sciences, which is why advanced computing capabilities need to be seamlessly integrated into the end-to-end scientific process," said Tony Hey, corporate vice president for technical computing at Microsoft. "With Mathematica 6 and Parallel Computing Toolkit running on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003, scientists and researchers have ready access to high-impact adaptive visualization, which makes it easier for the scientist to both develop the application and deploy it on the Windows-based cluster." Features include: * Efficient, adaptive load balancing * Support for ad-hoc clustering, allowing users to take advantage of sitewide Mathematica installations * Machine-independent portable code development * User-programmable scheduling for problem-specific adaptation * Automatic failure recovery and reassignment of stranded processes * Speculative parallelization for nondeterministic problems * Improved configuration of remote Mathematica kernels, including Mathematica 6 and Mathematica 5.2 * PC-based simulation and testing of parallel applications Parallel Computing Toolkit 2.1 is also a major component of the forthcoming updates to gridMathematica and Mathematica Personal Grid Edition. Parallel Computing Toolkit and Mathematica 6 are being demonstrated live by Wolfram Research, Microsoft, and Tyan Computer Corporation at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC '07), June 26-29 in Dresden, Germany. More information is available at the Parallel Computing Toolkit website.