Microsoft has launched a beta program for its Dryad Project, a set of technologies aimed at answering enterprise needs around large data sets.
The company recently unveiled Community Technology Previews (CTPs) of Dryad, DSC and DryadLINQ, technologies meant to support data-intensive applications running on a Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 cluster.
“These technologies allow you to process large volumes of data in many types of applications, including data-mining applications, image and stream processing, and some scientific computations,” according to the Windows HPC Team blog. “Dryad and DSC run on the cluster to support data-intensive computing and manage data that is partitioned across the cluster. DryadLINQ allows developers to define data intensive applications using the .Net LINQ model.”
In a paper (PDF), Microsoft researchers described Dryad as a general-purpose distributed execution engine for “coarse-grain data-parallel applications.”
For more, read the eWeek article: Microsoft Unveils Beta for Dryad Technology .