“Microsoft says a Windows-based supercomputer has broken the
petaflop speed barrier, but the achievement is not being recognized
by the group that tracks the world’s fastest supercomputers,
because the same machine was able to achieve higher speeds using
Linux.“It’s an interesting story that demonstrates Microsoft’s
improving ability to run high-performance applications, while also
giving Linux fans reason to smile.“The petaflop barrier was first broken in June 2008, when IBM
and Los Alamos achieved a long-sought goal in the supercomputing
industry, by building a Linux-based machine that could perform one
thousand trillion calculations per second, a remarkable speed known
as a “petaflop.”