Microsoft and Cornell Bring Supercomputing to the Financial Services Industry at a Fraction of the Cost of Proprietary SystemsNew York 19 June 2001 The Cornell Theory Center (CTC) and Microsoft Corporation launched an expanded services for the finance industry through CTC's new role as a Windows Cluster Solutions Provider. Focused at CTC-Manhattan at 55 Broad St., these services will help the finance industry to take advantage of Window-based enterprise scale computing solutions, including the option to scale up new applications on servers with up to 32 processors and mainframe-like reliability and to scale out networked applications through component clustering services. CTC-Manhattan will offer consulting, software development, education and training, and special events for finance industry professionals and also will serve as a showcase and testbed for Windows High-Performance Computing clusters.
CTC-Manhattan specializes in financial applications support with a world-class
team of researchers and consultants, which includes both academic and industry
experts located in Manhattan, on Cornell's Ithaca campus, and around the world.
The faculty team members are affiliated with Cornell's Johnson Graduate School
of Management and academic departments including Computer Science, Operations
Research, Economics, and Mathematics, as well as with other research
institutions. Team members have extensive expertise in large-scale methods and
high-performance computing as applied to computational finance.
CTC's Broad St. offices were originally opened in 1998 as the Financial Industry
Solutions Center (FISC) in partnership with SGI. Coleman noted that the
significant contribution from SGI for FISC enabled him to focus his optimization
expertise on financial solutions and to build contacts and clientele that will
be broadened with the new Microsoft-supported CTC-Manhattan.
The partnership of Microsoft and CTC comes as high-performance clusters are
rapidly demonstrating superior cost performance and reliability. "Our goals are
to firmly establish Windows as a production quality HPC computing operating
system and to create a fertile ground for research and innovation in upcoming
Windows-based architectures so that we can assist businesses in leveraging these
systems for their enterprise applications," said David Lifka, CTC chief
technical officer. CTC's cluster services will run the gamut from application
porting to cluster installation, with virtual and hands-on training in all
aspects of high-performance cluster computing.
CTC-Manhattan's computational finance team will be on hand at the Microsoft
exhibit for the Securities Industry Association's 2001 Technology Management
Conference, June 19-21 at the Hilton New York. Demonstrations will include
portfolio optimization, volatility modeling, and cluster performance monitoring
using visualization.
CTC was the first high-performance computing institution in the world to move
solely to Windows-based cluster computing. This move was made possible through a
partnership with Dell, Intel, and Microsoft, along with several other academic
and government organizations and companies. Velocity, CTC's first cluster
system, was installed at CTC for less than one-third the cost of a comparable
proprietary system. CTC systems now comprise the world's largest Windows cluster
computing complex, with more than 500 processors.
CTC is a high-performance computing and interdisciplinary computational research
center located at Cornell University, one of the leading institutions for
computational science and engineering in the country. Researchers associated
with the center work in some of the most computationally challenging fields -
from genomics to digital materials, drug design, and financial risk analysis.
CTC receives funding from Cornell, New York State, federal agencies, and
Corporate Program members.
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