Interactive Supercomputing

Interactive Supercomputing (ISC) was a technology company founded in 2005 that developed an interactive parallel computing platform. The company's core mission was to bridge the gap between interactive desktop computing and high-performance computing (HPC) servers, making supercomputing power more accessible to a broader range of users. The technology originated from six years of research led by co-founder Professor Alan Edelman of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The firm was venture-backed, raising approximately $18 million from investors including Flagship Ventures, Ascent Venture Partners, and CommonAngels.

The company's flagship product, Star-P, was a software platform designed to enable scientists, engineers, and financial analysts to run complex computational problems on parallel supercomputers directly from familiar desktop applications like MATLAB and Python. A key benefit of Star-P was its ability to automatically parallelize code, eliminating the need for users to reprogram their applications in complex languages such as C or FORTRAN, a process that could often take months or years. This allowed for faster prototyping and interactive problem-solving on large-scale datasets. ISC targeted clients in the biomedical, financial, and government laboratory research sectors, as well as manufacturing and energy. The business model involved selling the Star-P software and forming strategic partnerships, such as a distribution agreement with Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI).

In a significant milestone, Microsoft acquired the technology assets of Interactive Supercomputing in September 2009 for an undisclosed sum. Following the acquisition, ISC's CEO, Bill Blake, and the company's technical team joined Microsoft's New England Research & Development Center to integrate the technology into future Microsoft products. While Microsoft committed to supporting existing Star-P customers, it discontinued further sales and development of the Star-P product, with version 2.8 being the final release. The acquisition represented Microsoft's strategic move to enhance its capabilities in the high-performance and parallel computing markets.

Keywords: parallel computing, high-performance computing, Star-P, supercomputing software, MATLAB parallelization, Python parallelization, technical computing, Microsoft acquisition, computational science, data simulation