Snowball - The Blog

The third keynote at PDC 2008 is covering Microsoft Research and how their work influences the products that Microsoft creates. Almost all the technologies we use daily from Microsoft contain in some way a technology from Microsoft Research.

The team of over 850 PHDs is located all over the world in 5 research centers, of which the largest is located in Redmond. Also, some collaborative institutions work closely together with MSR.

Some of the most known technologies coming from MSR are DirectX, Windows Media Audio and Video, SQLServer, Robotics Studio... MSR also does hardware research, of which the tablet PC is a good example. The first conception of a tablet PC occured in the research center in the UK.

Some of the technologies that are now being worked on:

• PEX: a technology to figure out what you need to unit-test.
• DryadLINQ: creates a plan for the execution of large LINQ queries in the cloud
  

Microsoft Research not only works directly on technologies, they also try to make efforts in the environment. MSR is investing stongly in Energy Efficient Computing. They developed a sensor containing a small 16bit processor that measures the heat in a certain spot. In the past few days, the entire keynote room was equiped with over 80 sensors. During the convention, the sensors recorded the temperatures and sent that data to the cloud. Using this information, more efficient cooling schema's can be created.

Now, this technique can also be used for data centers and that's exactly what Microsoft is doing. Since they are building a lot of data centers to get ready for Azure, it's vital that the energy is sed efficiently in these data centers.

Using this technology, it's much easier to follow the evolving climate. Therefore, a number of sensors are already being used in the Swiss Alps.

On a different front, MSR also has a vast effect on health care. One of the focus areas is the creation of Personlized Medicine. What this means, is that it is the goal of heathcare to tailor medicine to a particular person. The current expectation is that in the 2-3 following years, using special techniques, this will be possible in the not-so-far feature.
The battle against HIV is being helped also from technologies from MSR.

One of the most known, and in my opinion most impressive things coming out of Microsoft Research, is the WorldWide Telescope (http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/). The demo shown here at PDC is really impressive and I encourage you to check out the technology, it's free. It's one of projects MSR is working on for education.

The final demo is SecondLight. This is really amazing: it allows you to project a image on a secondary surface above a surface platform. This allows you to see more info on a piece of plastic that you hold above the surface. Hard to explain, great to see!

In this keynote, we got a glimpse of the future of computing. A very interesting morning!