SGI will release servers based on Windows Compute Cluster Server (CCS) 2003 from March.

The supercomputing veteran emerged from bankruptcy protection late last year. SGI has been largely focused on Linux in recent years, so the deal is something of a coup for Microsoft, which already counts IBM and HP among supporters for CCS.

Microsoft’s CCS operating system is aimed at the high-performance computing sector and SGI sees happy hunting grounds in media, CAD and life sciences for clusters based on Xeon-based Altix XE servers costing from $3,500 per node.

“The key thing about CCS is the message passing interface which means you have a high degree of interoperability between Linux and Windows, and those are the heterogeneous environments we’re targeting,” said John Masters, SGI marketing director. “You can have a hybrid model where you’re running complementary programs on Linux, Windows and Itanium boxes and exchange results between them.”